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vidavalor · 1 year ago

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The *Original* Original Sin Theory or... why Aziraphale's "I forgive you"s really mean "forgive me" and just why he wants Crowley's absolution...

Will this break your heart in a good way and make the end of S2 hurt less? more? both? idk let's find out...

I want to talk about what the Before the Beginning scene does to the Eden scene and what all that suggests about Aziraphale and Crowley's relationship... because it might be enough to upend what we think this relationship is quite a bit, at least from Aziraphale's POV, if it goes in the direction that I think they are hinting at in S3, which I'm basing off of where they took it in S2 in these scenes.

This also contains an analysis of That Scene from 2.06 that ties into lots of other scenes and some other meta related to the show and it's a bit long-- like, the mother of all metas-- but there are pretty gifs and I brought snacks? Just letting you know it's a long post but tuck in with some tea if you're in the mood and thanks for reading. :)

Under the big cutty thing...

Before we get started, a couple of quick warnings: I curse a bit in here. It's in the show itself but just letting you know it's here a bit, too. I also mention *very* briefly suicide ideation in the characters and also very briefly (one sentence) Satan's mind-control of Crowley in S1 in a way that might be sensitive for a sexual assault survivor. There is general mention of religious trauma and abusive relationships (not Crowley & Aziraphale's relationship) all over this. If you are okay with the show, you should be more than fine reading this but just wanted to let you know up front. If you're okay with that, read on...

So, the Before the Beginning scene contains a twist, in that we learn that pre-Fall Crowley is naive to Heaven while Aziraphale is the one who is wary of it. This is especially interesting because, best we can tell, no angel has Fallen yet. There aren't *explicit* consequences for asking questions yet, as Crowley doesn't think it could get him into trouble to do so... but *Aziraphale* does. Heaven in S1 and S2 is shown to be basically a fascist state full of bullies jockeying for power where the ones on top dole out all sorts of abuses to maintain a sense of order among the rank and file. We see the emotional and even physical abuse they dole out to Aziraphale and how little they tolerate any sort of dissent, even from an archangel, based on what they ultimately do when Gabriel doesn't want to do arma-bloody-geddon anymore. Heaven is basically The Kremlin. Toe out of line and they'll toss you off a high-rise while telling everyone how sad it is that you recently had a spell of depression and heart troubles as a way of scaring everyone else into submission, right? What's surprising to us is that Aziraphale knows this *absolutely* Before the Beginning and he's terrified on Crowley's behalf, since this place functions as a kind of mafia state.

This implies something really kind of dark which is that Aziraphale knows enough to know how to toe a party line and keep quiet about any doubts he has. He knows how to survive in a way that then-innocent Crowley did not. He tries to tell Crowley that questioning things is going to get him angel-killed but Crowley has a faith in God that's different than Aziraphale's was even before the Earth was fully created. Crowley believed in Her more than Aziraphale does. He doesn't think anything will happen to him. Aziraphale knows what will and this implies knowledge of the abuse of the system and it completely changes our perspective of Aziraphale throughout the rest of the series. We often think of him as either willfully naive or just desperately optimistic regarding Heaven's goodness but, in reality, he's neither of those things. He's something else, entirely. His actions are not expressing naivete or desperate optimism or anything else.

They are expressions of guilt.

And the Eden scene tells us why he has that guilt.

The Eden scene introduces us to Crowley and Aziraphale and the series itself and it has Crowley posit the central question of the show regarding the nature of angels and demons:

Objectively, when you watch this scene, you think this is about the tempting of Eve and the flaming sword. It is... but it's also not *just* about that. Because Crowley and Aziraphale are watching Adam & Eve venture off beyond the Garden of Eden in this scene. They're still within view so the flaming sword situation happened a matter of minutes earlier. Yet, when Crowley posits that central question of which one of them actually did the good thing and which did the bad thing, Aziraphale reveals that it wouldn't be funny at all if what Crowley is saying (that Aziraphale actually did the bad thing) is true. He's distressed about it and so Crowley, somewhat dryly, reassures him that he's an angel so he couldn't have done the wrong thing. (Crowley, of course, being a literal former angel punished for doing the wrong thing lol and that being the joke but also in there is also the layer of Crowley genuinely liking Aziraphale and trying to tell him that it's all okay and meaning it.) Aziraphale is relieved and this is the key bit here-- he says oh good "because it's been bothering me."

The tone of this is that this central question of whether or not he did wrong or right by Crowley and whether or not Crowley was wrong or right in his actions *has been bothering* Aziraphale and he phrases it in a way that implies he's been losing angelic sleep (so to speak) about it for a little while now. If this was *just about Adam and Eve* then Aziraphale's reaction here makes absolutely no sense because the camera also then cuts in their conversation to in front of Crowley and Aziraphale *to show us Adam and Eve still visible in the near-distance* fighting off the lion with the flaming sword. They literally *just left* so how could Aziraphale be all in knots for awhile now over whether or not he made the wrong call? He's not. You can argue that his decision here in Eden to help Adam and Eve by giving them his flaming sword-- by standing up and doing something in the face of God to help out other beings he secretly thinks might have been treated unfairly-- *is a direct response to what he failed to do back in Before the Beginning*...

... which was to stand up for Crowley.

Meaning: Aziraphale doesn't need to see Heaven's files to find out what happened to Crowley when Crowley fell because he was there. S3 is going to be about preventing the Second Coming and so plot allusions to the crucification (which had its own Crowley & Aziraphale scene in S1) will likely abound. Aziraphale was there when Lucifer and The Gang were tossed out of Heaven. To be fair to Aziraphale, there is basically nothing he could have done to prevent this and the best possible situation is that he didn't even have the chance to. The worst possible situation is that he's literally Judas and sold Crowley out, out of fear of being tossed out of Heaven himself. I tend to think it's more that he just didn't stand up and say anything in support of Crowley to prevent himself from being seen as on the side of the eventual demons. Still, just as Crowley thinks the punishment for Adam and Eve was harsh, Aziraphale thought that asking questions and being curious wasn't enough to send Lucifer and everyone around him to Hell to be damned for all of eternity but it caused an obvious existential crisis in him that he still struggles to totally resolve.

If he disagreed with the decision to cast out the suggestion box-happy angels, he was as "bad" as they were. If he agreed with the decision, he was condemning them and that didn't seem angelic, either. How to be a good angel, which is the only thing he had ever tried to be or knew how to be? He did what he thought must be right-- to follow what the other, more powerful angels said the word of God was-- and if it was Her will, then it must be what was right, even if it was *extremely difficult* to see how this lovebug here was really an evil, demonic creature of Hell...

Not to mention that Aziraphale was in love with WhateverHeWasCalledPre-Crawly!Crowley. (We will just call him "Crowley" for this whole meta, because that is the name he chose for himself.) And maybe Angel!Crowley went after the more glamorous, daring guys. Heaven honestly seems like both a fascist state and high school at once (is there really a difference? lol). Crowley describes how he wound up falling in S1 as that he "hung out with the wrong crowd" and Aziraphale in Before the Beginning honestly seems like he's been flying around watching Crowley make stars for ages, trying to work up the nerve to or find an opportunity to introduce himself to the beautiful hot cool arty science-y guy who barely looks at him when his other option for a view are nebulas... or Benedict Cumberbatch's Lucifer/Satan, whose "stroke of demonic genius, dahling" bit in S1 and dark assault on his fave Crowley while Crowley was driving had a real "Angel!Crowley went for the bad boy who were so bad pre-Fall that they wound up fucking Satan afterwards and friend-zoned angels like Aziraphale" vibes. Alternatively, maybe he didn't totally? Before the Beginning seems to be the first time they met and maybe after that, Crowley and Aziraphale became close. It's just that Crowley canonically also wound up sitting at the cool kids' table because they were the only ones questioning things and he wound up damned for eternity for it and Aziraphale?

Aziraphale blames himself for it.

He has blamed himself for Crowley's Fall for six thousand years.

When they speak in Eden, Aziraphale is being confronted for the first time with what has come of his nebula-joyous, freshly baked blueberry muffin of an angel. He calls himself "Crawly" now-- or that's the name he's been given-- because who he was is dead. His eyes are yellow. He's now a snake. He's maybe a bit sarcastic, a bit dry, and a lot more guarded and aloof but Aziraphale sees flickers of Angel!Crowley in there. He's *kind* to Aziraphale. He's still inquisitive, in spite of it being what damned him to Hell. Aziraphale, God help him, is still wildly into him and, ugh, maybe even *more* so, in spite of everything.

And 'everything', for Aziraphale, includes Crowley being a demon being Aziraphale's fault.

They don't talk about it. Ever.

They don't talk about it because Aziraphale thinks that Crowley doesn't remember. Crowley's memory loss of a lot of his time pre-Fall is canon in S2-- something we, the audience, will need to understand the whole picture when/if we end up getting this revelation in S3 of Crowley's Fall and that Aziraphale feels he's at least partially responsible. What's even harder for Aziraphale is that because Crowley doesn't remember his time as an angel, he doesn't remember their full history together. He doesn't remember how they met and protecting Aziraphale from the first celestial shower and all the times they chatted after that and if they were in love back then, Crowley doesn't remember it. Eden then becomes, to Crowley, the first time they meet... but then look at how while Aziraphale seems to think that Crowley doesn't know him while Aziraphale knows Crowley-- the moment that he pauses so Crowley can introduce himself-- *Crowley* seems a little bemused. Why?

Because what Aziraphale has failed to consider is that the one memory that the demons are allowed to keep, most likely, is their Fall, which means that if Aziraphale was there when Crowley fell, Crowley actually *does* remember him. At minimum, he remembers Aziraphale being there and looking stricken by what was happening so even if he can't remember more than that, he knows he's safe with Aziraphale and that Aziraphale cared about him, which would explain why he risked going to talk to with him on the wall in Eden. He knows they were friends and that Aziraphale is good and he can trust him. It's also theoretically possible that if Crowley remembers his Fall and if Aziraphale was there, it's a trigger to him being able to remember all of his and Aziraphale's time before Crowley fell. Aziraphale might not know this and because these two idiots do not know how to talk-- and especially don't talk about this-- Crowley hasn't told him. In part because Crowley can't go back and he doesn't want them to dwell on Angel!Crowley when Crowley is who he is and if that's a demon, it's a demon, and the whole system can go fuck itself anyway, as far as Crowley's concerned.

Aziraphale, though, is still back on "it's my fault". He thinks he literally took goodness from the world; that he participated in the murder of his friend and the love of his life. He has never. In six. thousand. years. lol. told Crowley that he feels like this because he still thinks that Crowley doesn't remember Aziraphale betraying him and he is terrified that if he told Crowley he did-- if he told him that he was responsible, in part, for his Fall-- that Crowley would hate him and Crowley is Aziraphale's only friend in the universe and Aziraphale is madly in love with him. He couldn't bear the loss of him. He can handle their occasional spats and disagreements, knowing that Crowley always comes back, but this? If Crowley knew that his Fall was Aziraphale's fault? Aziraphale thinks Crowley wouldn't come back from that and he'd never see him again.

In reality? Crowley either already knows this and has the whole time or suspects it or if he found it out, would forgive Aziraphale for it. If he knows, he already has. His counter-argument is, like, what were you supposed to do to save me, exactly, angel? You alone versus all the hierarchy of Heaven and God Herself? I'm *glad* you didn't do something stupid and get yourself tossed into a pit of boiling sulphur. You don't deserve that.

Thing is, though, because they've never had this conversation because they DO NOT TALK lol, Aziraphale thinks he *does* deserve that. But look at what's happened since he made the decision not to save Crowley from falling...

...nothing.

Nothing has happened to Aziraphale. He didn't fall for it himself. He didn't fall for betraying the angel he loved and he wonders every. single. day. why he didn't and the only thing he can come up with is that he must have done the right thing. *It must be* that Crowley did the bad thing and Aziraphale did the good one because Crowley was damned to Hell for all of eternity and Aziraphale is still an angel of Heaven, six thousand years later. It's not for Aziraphale to question God. Her will is ineffable. It's ineffable because he cannot begin to understand how any of this can possibly be just and that just keeps happening over and over and over and over throughout the years to come in every situation he and Crowley find themselves in, from Job to The Flood to Wee Morag and Elspeth to Arma-bloody-geddon, right?

Aziraphale begins to lose count of how many times he's gone up against God at this point. Gives away his flaming sword to Adam and Eve. Saves as many as he could during The Flood-- *with* Crowley. (You know they did.) Lies to Gabriel's face in the eyes of God to save Job and Sitis' children... and learning that Falling was political, really, in the process. Nothing happened to Aziraphale for Job's kids. He suffered no consequence for lying to Heaven and God because Crowley was willing to lie for him-- to protect him from Falling, where Aziraphale couldn't protect Crowley himself ages before-- and nothing happened. Falling, suddenly, didn't seem totally God-ordained it it could be tossed aside by something as simple as having a demon just choose not to toss you to Satan. Crowley didn't take him to Hell because he didn't feel like Aziraphale belonged there. It wound up all entirely within Crowley's control, which then made Aziraphale begin to question if God was even really behind the Fall of Lucifer and the Gang or if it wasn't just the thugs in charge of Heaven who decided to toss them out... thoughts he was terrified to think and didn't dare voice aloud, at least not then.

In another era, Aziraphale and Crowley stood there together to witness the torture and murder of Jesus Christ in the name of God, in a parallel to the Fall. What happened to Jesus? He was betrayed by his closest friend, then tortured and murdered by those in the government who thought he posed a threat to social order. Heaven as Pontius Pilate. Aziraphale as a kind of Judas, in Aziraphale's mind, anyway.

Jesus as Crowley.

Time goes on and he and The Demon Crowley form friendship in their own right, regardless of what Crowley might remember from before his Fall. They form their Arrangement off of that and Aziraphale learns even more that, often, no one is really paying attention to what they do. That no one seems to notice if Crowley performs an angelic miracle or if Aziraphale performs what has become termed a 'demonic miracle'... because, really, *they're the same*, though that's not something Aziraphale can fully admit. He cannot allow himself to believe that demons *are angels* because if there's nothing different between demons and angels than Aziraphale doesn't know anything at all.

Anything at all... He doesn't know what being an angel *is* and it's what he supposedly is so it means he doesn't know who or what he is, really.

He doesn't know what God wants or if he truly believes in Her.

He doesn't know what the purpose of all of this is-- why Crowley had to suffer, why demons in general have to, why the *humans* do. Why it all has to be destroyed eventually. To what end?

Aziraphale has the same questions Crowley does and sometimes, late at night, often a little drunk, he'll dare to ask them with Crowley, and every morning that he still wakes up and sobers up and finds himself still an angel when Crowley Fell for so much less than Aziraphale has ever thought or done, he wonders just *why?*

Why is he still an angel when he, really, is no different from Crowley? Why Crowley is damned? Punished for all of eternity for curiosity and innovation and imagination, while Aziraphale is still an angel, doomed to only have until the clock runs out on Armageddon before losing him for the rest of fucking *eternity* but, until then, stuck suffering watching him suffer while remaining an angel? Is being an angel at this point, really, his punishment for failing the apparently foul fiend he adores?

Does Aziraphale ever have any answers to these questions? Good God, no lol. He's six thousand years into this and he's in the same spot as Amnesiac!ArchangelFuckingGabriel in 2.01:

...would be okay if you could just be one near particular person?

Of course Aziraphale knows what this feels like. Of course. We know he does. And that's why he hasn't been able to make a real move in six thousand years-- because it's his fault, as far as he's concerned.

Crowley's damnation is his fault. Crowley cannot really love him, or couldn't if he knew. Not because he's a demon, though Aziraphale might have thought that at one point but he definitely was cured of it by events in 1941. The more time that goes by, the more Aziraphale knows that Crowley loves him-- that he's *in* love with him-- and the worse it all gets for Aziraphale because every day that he hasn't told Crowley that he didn't prevent him from Falling is another day within the last *six thousand years* of them falling in love and the betrayal seems to get worse and worse to Aziraphale. The time to have this conversation was on the wall in Eden and it still hasn't happened. Still, over time, he starts to realize that Crowley, if ever knew, would forgive him.

Because his Crowley has the kindest of hearts. He really does, and that wasn't taken from him when he Fell and Aziraphale finds every opportunity he can to delight in seeing that and making Crowley reveal it.

It goes against everything Aziraphale is supposed to believe.

Demons are not supposed to be good-- if they were, they wouldn't have Fallen. Yet, Aziraphale knows Crowley is. He never has truly believed that Crowley isn't-- even when he could have, at least at the start. He worried, maybe, that he had helped create a monster out of the most lovely being he'd ever known but Crowley just kept proving him wrong about that, time and time again. *Crowley* doesn't believe it about himself, really, because that's his own trauma from his Fall but Aziraphale believes it about him and that's often good enough for Crowley.

But, really, this is why they still haven't gotten together in six thousand years. This is why Aziraphale seems like he can never get beyond "I'm an angel and you're a demon", no matter what Crowley does or how he proves that there are shades of gray and also, that the entire system is bullshit. It is not that Aziraphale doesn't *know* that it's bullshit-- it's that if he admits that it is, if he stops believing in Heaven (even if he doesn't stop believing in God), then he's left with nothing but the crushing weight of guilt that he has for all the pain that Crowley has been through.

If he tells himself that Crowley Fell *for a reason* and that he (Aziraphale) was *right* to not interfere, to not try to thwart God, even if it would have likely failed, just on principle, to stand up for his friend... then Aziraphale doesn't have to deal with the fact that he made what he really considers to be a colossal mistake and that it has caused the continued pain and torture and eternal damnation of the being he considers his soulmate...

...which is why everytime that pain comes to the surface in something Crowley says or does, Aziraphale *cannot handle it at all whatsoever* and reverts to You'reADemonI'mAnAngel!Mode.

Example: Crowley's religious trauma on display in their bandstand argument:

Crowley owns this, even if he's still traumatized by it. He's saying it sarcastically, making a joke on a song Aziraphale probably barely knows, if he knows at all ("Unforgettable"-- Nat King Cole). Aziraphale *aches* at Crowley saying this-- because it reminds him that it's partially his own fault. And he can't. Do. Anything. About. It.

He's an all-powerful *angel* here but he can't change this for Crowley. He can't stop his suffering some six thousand years after his Fall. He's looking at sexy goth Crowley here and he's thinking about curly-haired, beaming, ball of light! Crowley and that they are *the same person* and Aziraphale *does* know that. He knows it and he loves him passionately and desperately and he is one of the most powerful beings ever in existence and he's standing there looking at the man-shaped-being he adores talking about how he still aches from the betrayal of his fellow angels and his mother God and *there is no way for Aziraphale to fix it* when he can mend broken bones and heal the sick and let their be light! all over the place. He can do proper magic and still, he cannot take away Crowley's pain.

This is Aziraphale's Hell. He didn't Fall but he's been in Hell anyway.

So when Crowley's religious trauma and pain comes out, usually in an argument like in the bandstand scene, Aziraphale does the only thing he thinks he *can* do, right? He's an angel. Still. Somehow. He's an angel and there must be some reason for that and an angel is not a demon-- an angel is a purer being, a healer-- and so he says "I forgive you". He doesn't mean it to be patronizing, even if it is. ("I am a *great deal* holier than thou," as he told Crowley at one point and that was the point, right?) He is trying to say "I am still of Heaven and if it's absolution you need, I can give it to you."

He is trying to say: You are not unforgivable to me.

The real lyric of the song Crowley parodies in the bandstand is what Aziraphale means, whether he knows that song or not...

Unforgettable/That's what you are...

*Crowley*, though, doesn't know about Aziraphale's inner turmoil because *heavy sigh* FFS TALK, YOU IDIOTS *breathes* lol, so *he* hears:

I still think I am better than you and you are Fallen, so you're not worthy of me. I can't love you, not the way you want. I love all beings because I'm an angel and I you know I'm in love with you but I can't *allow* myself to be because it goes against the nature of an angel and I've only done eleven thousand things that should have made me Fall over the years but letting myself be in love with you is the rubicon I won't cross, apparently...

Crowley knows by the time they're having the bandstand argument enough about Aziraphale's general religious trauma (not necessarily about how it pertains to Crowley's Fall but about it in general) to know that he spits out hateful garbage when he feels cornered and how to just call it bullshit and move on. ("I don't even like you."/"You doooo.") But he understandably walks away when Aziraphale pushes him away past a point he can handle-- and Aziraphale knows how to do that. He does it *intentionally.* The "I forgive you" is sadness because it's all he has to offer Crowley but he also knows it'll piss Crowley off enough to end the argument, so he says it intentionally to get Crowley to go away. In this scene (which parallels the end of S2 quite a bit, as many have noticed), Aziraphale is trying to deal with it all on his own, right?

He knows where the antichrist is. He's just not telling Crowley yet. He's trying to deal with it to keep him safe. He's doing it because he thinks he should-- that maybe, when it's something of this level of importance, that his job should be as an angel first, above his side with Crowley. (It's also worth mentioning here that Aziraphale is straight up terrified of Falling, not even just for being damned to Hell but because then, if he's no longer in Heaven, he has exactly zero power to even *try* to protect Crowley.) At the end of S2? With The Metatron?

Aziraphale does the same thing as with the antichrist for a time in S1, really.

The beginning of S2 shows us that Aziraphale has known that Heaven is North Korea since Before the Beginning so now marry that with its last scenes and see the arc that connects them-- Aziraphale does what he does out of guilt over what happened to Crowley to *protect* Crowley. He didn't want to do any of it without Crowley and when The Metatron finally offers that carrot, Aziraphale is suspicious as all hell (pardon the pun) and here we have this moment where part of him *wants* this to all be real, right?

Times change and sometimes, your parents who traumatized the living fuck out of you and didn't approve of your boyfriend, grow the hell up a bit and try to repent and mend fences. Maybe the trust is broken but maybe it can be healed and *as an angel*, Aziraphale is a being of goodness and hope and optimism. He's pure of heart, as Crowley put it to Nina. He *wants* that to be the case... but he also knows it likely is not.

Still... they can't run. There's nowhere that Heaven won't find them. It's no life for them-- no life for Crowley, in Aziraphale's mind, no matter how many times Crowley tries to get him to run away with him. "We can go off together!" begs Crowley, over and over, and Aziraphale's only really ever found that Crowley will only slither off if he's ticked off enough and only "I forgive you" ever really does that enough to work lol. He *means* I love you endlessly but you know this is impossible, you bloody maddening, gorgeous serpent! Will you stop reminding me of what we could have when it can never happen?! but that's not exactly how Crowley's taking it.

In the end, to Aziraphale, Aziraphale is an angel and Crowley is a demon and they are doomed to spend eternity apart and Aziraphale thinks he has no one to blame, really, but himself. If he had somehow saved Crowley six thousand years ago-- or had somehow been brave enough to stand up for him and Fallen alongside him-- they could have been together forever.

But he wasn't then and now The Metatron is here and it's time for Aziraphale to go back to Heaven and he knows, as he sits there drinking coffee with the being whose posse sent Crowley in a free fall into a pit of boiling sulphur, that Crowley will never, ever, ever, EVER go back to Heaven.

But he also knows that Heaven is here to collect Aziraphale and they are making it clear that there is no escape. There's nowhere to run. Everyday, it's been getting closer for six thousand years and going faster than a roller coaster for the last handful but a love like Beez and Gabe's will surely never come his and Crowley's way now.

It was always going to end like this. Nothing lasts forever. He told Crowley that, Before the Beginning. Six thousand years. That was all the time they had before the end of Earth, the place they'd come to call home. They found a way to borrow a few more years at the end of it since S1 and he got to dance with Crowley, their fingers brushing, and that is going to have to be enough because they're out of time.

The Metatron never needed say it directly but it was evident: they wanted Aziraphale to go to Heaven and they would say or do anything to get him up there and Aziraphale may have bought it for a moment but he's definitely figured out by the end of S2 that they need him up there not to become the Supreme Archangel but because his time as an angel is now over. The threat to Crowley is unspoken but omnipresent.

The Metatron makes it sound like he doesn't care if Crowley comes back up to Heaven with Aziraphale or not and he really doesn't and why would that be? Why would he be eager to have the two most troublesome beings in all of Heaven and Hell teaming up and getting in the way of his Second Coming plans, which he absolutely *knows* they won't support? Because they won't have jobs waiting for them up there. Crowley will not be restored to full angelic status.

They're going to kill them. Aziraphale knows it. He's known what Heaven is since Before the Beginning, even if he's been in denial about it for almost as long to try to assuage his own guilt over participating in it.

And it's a lot easier a goal for Heaven to accomplish if they separate them and just Aziraphale goes up to Heaven. If Aziraphale goes alone-- if he keeps Crowley from following-- then Crowley is not a threat to them if Aziraphale is gone.

They aren't as powerful apart.

Aziraphale knows that if Crowley comes to Heaven with him that they will kill him and Aziraphale thinks okay, this is it... this is my moment of redemption.

Six thousand years since Crowley Fell and I can finally make up for not saving him by saving him now.

I can go with The Metatron and let Heaven kill me and know that they will not threaten Crowley if they do because what they are threatened by is both of us together. One of us, alone, is less of a threat and the only problem here is that if I go... Crowley will follow me.

If I just go without telling him what The Metatron said and I don't come back right away, he'll go to Heaven, worried that something happened to me, and they'll kill him when he comes looking for me. He'll find out they've Book of Life'd me and do something stupid and my sacrifice to keep him safe will all be for nothing.

So what's our tortured angel to do?

Bandstand 2.0, right?

He's got to piss Crowley off enough that Crowley won't follow him.

He's got to piss Crowley off so much that Crowley *will never come back* and the worst part is that Aziraphale knows *exactly* how to do it.

He makes his own plans and if things get drastic enough, he'll blow up that damn halo, metaphorically-speaking this time. To save Crowley, he will break Crowley.

It's darkly romantic, really. He'll sacrifice himself for Crowley but to be sure that Crowley will be safe and not follow, he'll have to break his heart a bit first-- to further their misunderstandings in a season based on "I don't think your exactly is my exactly exactly"-level miscommunications.

So Aziraphale accepts The Metatron's offer and lets The Metatron think he completely believes that the offer is legit and maybe a part of him is still hoping that it is but he knows it's really not and that this is a suicide run. This is Aziraphale's Holy Water arc...

...and speaking of Holy Water... that arc from the perspective of this being Aziraphale's mentality... Crowley, tortured by Hell for what he did while with Aziraphale in 1827, then refusing to talk about it, showing up with a cane, sullen and depressed, asking Aziraphale for the one thing that would kill him and Aziraphale's unwillingness to understand that it wasn't completely suicide ideation on Crowley's part but as a way to *protect Aziraphale* and keep him safe. Crowley wanted what could kill a demon not to kill himself but to kill one that might come after Aziraphale. All Aziraphale could see, though, was Crowley's physical and emotional pain, that he could barely keep hidden in that era, and how Aziraphale couldn't make it better. All he could see was how he failed him and led him to this suffering. All he could see in a note begging for "holy water" was Crowley wanting a suicide pill, wanting to destroy himself, unable to take any more, in so much pain that he'd leave Aziraphale forever to make it stop. Aziraphale is blinded entirely by guilt and fails to see what Crowley is really saying, which was, ironically, the last time Crowley began to try to tell Aziraphale how he felt, which was:

I've been thinking-- what if it all goes wrong? (What if I lose you? I'm terrified of losing you. I love you. I wake up from nightmares of you being destroyed by the demons who just spent a couple of decades after 1827 not that long ago torturing me. I didn't know for sure if you were still alive during any of it.) We have a lot in common, you and me. (We're a team. A... group of the two of us.) What if it all goes pear-shaped? I need you to get me the magical demon-killing stuff so I have a weapon against *my own fellow fallen angels* that I can use in case they come after us. I would kill another demon and send every legion of Hell after me to protect you.

Aziraphale: I like pears.

(My God, they are so stupid. Please. I can't take any more lol.)

So, yeah... it's Aziraphale's turn for the holy water suicide run here only with an actual suicide run...

It takes the books in The Blitz for Aziraphale to really understand what Crowley was asking for and what he meant by asking for holy water and by 1967, he gives Crowley the holy water, in the one moment when *they actually talk*, as much as they can, about how much they love one another, that exists prior to the end of its parallel-- the end of S2.

So, yeah, Aziraphale "goes to tell his friend the good news" with a look on his face like he's marching to his death *because he is* and he knows it. His last moments with Crowley, in some of his last moments in existence, he already knows will be spent upsetting the man-shaped being he loves. He's got it all planned out. Not exactly the picnic of his dreams but it'll redeem him and save Crowley and that's all that matters to Aziraphale in this moment.

He will sound naive to the threat of Heaven and because Crowley doesn't remember pre-Fall, he won't remember how Aziraphale warned him against taking on the brass in Heaven so Crowley won't be suspicious, he'll be *frustrated*, like he was in the bandstand. He'll get angry. Aziraphale's goal is to get him to storm out-- but it has to be a really, really, bad relationship-ending storming out.

He can't come back after he drives The Bentley around the block like he did back in 2.01 and say "okay, fine, I'll help you" and Aziraphale knows that if he plays this right, he can make it so Crowley won't because helping Gabriel was one thing but asking Crowley to become an angel with him and pretending like they can go fix the broken system of Heaven is going to be Crowley's bridge too far. It's *the only thing* that Aziraphale believes is Crowley's bridge too far where Aziraphale is concerned and isn't that heartbreaking as hell? That Crowley loves him this much? And they never got to be together the way they wanted? That they were just beginning to get close to trying to figure that out?

That, hours ago, Aziraphale was asking him to dance and trying to ignore the signs of trouble around the corner, desperately wanting more time with him? That they are semi-immortal beings that always somehow seem to be out of time?

Truer words have never been spoken, Crowley. Little did you know, poor demon...

So Aziraphale goes into the bookshop and Crowley looks all worked up and wants to say something and some part of Aziraphale begins to hear warning alarms going off in his head because Crowley *never* looks like this-- is never this flustered, never this uncomfortable, never this nervous, never in a rush to say something-- and Aziraphale thinks no, can't be, we don't talk about this... even if, ironically, all of S2 shows that Aziraphale has been trying *for just that*. It was just a few hours ago that he was trying to Jane Austen a ball for them to use as a pretense to discuss their feelings because, in the height of ironies here, right?

Aziraphale was ready.

They'd had some time without Heaven and Hell breathing so much down their necks, even if the threat still loomed, and spent every day together and it was perfect and it was lovely and he knew Crowley would forgive him and Aziraphale was almost there, right, he was *almost* ready to tell him. He was almost ready to tell him he loved him and that it was him, all those millennia ago, who could have done something and didn't and he's so, so, so sorry and can Crowley ever forgive him? Is there any way that Crowley could ever forgive him after what he didn't say and didn't do when he should have? For all the times since that he's said things in anger when, really, he was madly in love and just full of his own issues to sort out? (Damn, Aziraphale, we're beginning to see your affinity for Austen heroes here...)

But he's out of time so there will be none of that now. Now is his karmic payback. Six thousand beautiful years with the being he loves and feels he doesn't deserve have led to Aziraphale's redemption being that he can sacrifice himself to save him. He can leave the world they love with Crowley and Crowley's *goodness* in it, as it should be. So when Crowley says he needs to say something, Aziraphale cannot-- CANNOT-- let him speak because he cannot bear it.

He suddenly fears that of course-- OF COURSE-- the one moment in all of these trillions of moments they've lived through where Crowley is about to directly say he loves him for the first time is the also the same fucking moment when Aziraphale has to destroy their relationship to save Crowley's life and Aziraphale will be dead after this and he cannot bear hearing what his life could have been. He can't hear Crowley say this right now or else he worries he might lose his nerve. He *wants* to hear it but if Crowley speaks first, Aziraphale might cave, he might be weak again like he was when Crowley Fell, he might fail him again, and he can't. Not after all this time. Not when he loves Crowley so much.

"What's that lovely human expression?! 'Hold that thought!'" he blurts out, in a callback to, of course, the moment Crowley saved him in 1941-- to that night where Aziraphale really realized for the first time that Crowley wasn't just capable of good or capable of being friendly towards him but that Crowley *loved* him and that he loved the Demon Crowley, whether or not he should. ("But somewhere in my wicked, miserable past," sings Frances McDormand as the Voice of God, from her apparent favorite film lol, "I must have done something good.")

Ah, yes. Played for suckers. Here is where it's important to note that in 1941, Aziraphale had no idea that Rose was really Greta and that he, in fact, was the one being played for a sucker. By the end of S2, though, it could be argued that he very much knows that The Metatron is Fraulein Greta Klauschmidt-- someone who presented herself as Captain Rose Montgomery, an agent of anti-fascist good, who approached Aziraphale in his bookshop and told him that he could be an agent of change, too. He could help save the world and stop the global rising tide of fascism represented by the Third Reich. He could even do so using his books. They plotted a sting together, in which he'd bring his books to a church and seem to give them to Nazis to give to the Fuhrer, only for agents to surround them and arrest the Nazis. Aziraphale, desperate to *do* good and to *be* good, falls for this-- he fails to see that Rose is really Greta, a Nazi agent who fools him into working for the enemy and getting him to help destroy the world in the process. Pretty obvious to see here that Greta is The Metatron in S2... but it's likely that Aziraphale knows it and is playing along because it's his turn to save Crowley, unlike what happened in 1941, when Crowley saves him and his books.

Crowley, in the bookshop back at the end of S2 in our present time, stops speaking at the "hold that thought", looking like he's about to be ill, and has to also be thinking of 1941 and the church now that Aziraphale has referenced it. Maybe, in some way, it's an unconscious effort on Aziraphale's part to convey to Crowley that this is a charade-- that he doesn't mean this, that it's an act-- but he really doesn't want Crowley to figure that out. It would defeat his goal. But he also doesn't want to hurt him because he loves him but this is the only way that Aziraphale can see to save him. So he starts gushing about his coffee with The Metatron, right? We all remember this pain lol.

Maybe I've misjudged him. (Aziraphale, we suspect you know that he tossed Crowley into hellfire and stole Gabriel's memories so honestly, the worst part of all of this is that you're so traumatized that Crowley is *buying* what you're saying here...) And guess what?! He wants me to be the new Supreme Archangel! And he said you can come! And you can be an angel again! It will be so fun! We can have a slumber party, Crowley, after days of doing good, and braid each other's hair!

Crowley is like jfc fml are you even serious right now? Which, of course, is what Aziraphale *was going for.* It's the "I don't even like you" and the "we're hereditary enemies" and the "I'm an angel, you're a demon" way of trying to intentionally push Crowley away but the new version of it because none of that flies with S2 Crowley-- most of it barely flew with him in S1-- because Crowley *knows.*

He knows that Aziraphale loves him. And he knows that Aziraphale knows him, which is to say he knows how to hurt him, and that's what this is but also Crowley just sees it as how much Heaven has hurt them both. How much they've hurt Aziraphale. Because just as Aziraphale looks at Crowley in the throes of his religious trauma-- "Unforgivable. It's what I am", etc.-- and wants to help and save and protect him, Crowley feels the same way in return when Aziraphale is like this. Frustrated, sure, but in just as much pain at how much pain Aziraphale is in and feels powerless to stop it but will do whatever he can to try to, yeah?

For Aziraphale, this is all going fairly well (it's miserable but in terms of goal, it's working) through "tell me you said no" but the problem is that Crowley is still pleading. He's still trying to work through it because they're an *us* now and also ironically of course this is when Crowley's been trying to do better with storming out lol so he's trying to couple-solve this. He's not just *leaving* like how Aziraphale had hoped. He had been trying to sell to Crowley that he could pick Heaven over Crowley and Crowley is just kinda... not believing it so much at first and, instead, is trying to approach it like a problem for the two of them to solve together, instead of as a decision that Aziraphale has made for his life that he's stating that Crowley can take or leave.

Which calls back to this scene in 2.01 at the start of this arc, when Crowley calls their life *his* life and Aziraphale counters with that he thought *they* had carved out a life for themselves *together* and Crowley answers: "so did I!" Because they haven't had a discussion about what they are, exactly, at that point, Crowley still cautiously calls *their* life *his* life, retaining a sense of autonomy, as if he's only making decisions for himself when, in reality, they are a couple who are trying to make a life together and have been doing so consciously since S1. Crowley calls that life "precious" and "peaceful" to Aziraphale-- beautiful, lovely things that they both treasure and want and find with one another-- but also "fragile". The threats to them still loom large in the background and they are still so afraid to go much further in their relationship because, in part, of those threats and how terrified they are of losing one another... which just makes the end of S2 even more brutal, really.

(*mantras* cottage in the south downs cottage in the south downs...)

So back in That Scene later in S2, Aziraphale is then just kind of stuck trying to figure out how to get Crowley to be so angry with him that he storms out and never comes back in the face of Crowley trying to very much not do that and then Crowley starts saying that he needs to say what he was going to say or he never will and Aziraphale *knows*, ok? He knows what Crowley needs to say. He just literally cannot believe this is going to happen right now. He honestly can't believe it's happening at all but right now?!

He knows before Crowley begins speaking. He probably knew when he told him to "hold that thought" a few moments before but he *really* knows now. Crowley has no idea that Aziraphale has planned for this to be the last time they ever see one another and to go sacrifice himself to Heaven for whatever they want to do with him to keep them away from Crowley. Crowley looks like he's about to pass out from nerves and can barely speak and just...

...six. thousand. years...

...I know we have all looked at the heartbreak of this scene from Crowley's POV here every which way to Sunday, okay, but just imagine you are Aziraphale, who has loved this being since before the literal beginning of time, and you blame yourself for his pain and suffering, and he's standing here, braver than you've ever been with him, looking into your eyes and telling you that he knows that you love him and that he loves you and he knows you both have known this for basically the entirety of your existence together and he can't pretend anymore. He doesn't want to pretend anymore. He knows things have changed over the last few years between you and he wants more of that. He wants to be with you.

The two of you are not even human, just human-adjacent beings who have gone native from the stars and clouds here, who live and love like humans, who know that maybe the angels and demons have it backwards and God's great creatures are the humans-- that it should be the good in them that you should be trying to emulate-- and Crowley had never been more beautifully, impossibly human than while he's standing there looking ready to pass out while asking you if, after six millennia, it might be alright for him to not hide how much he loves you.

How many times has Aziraphale imagined this by this point? A million? How many different ways? There's at least half of them when he imagines that he's the one who gets up the courage first but there are so. many. Crowley. fantasies. Ones in every time period. But always *a fantasy*, at least up until maybe very recently. Why?

Not even just Heaven and Hell and the threat of being caught but the fact that Aziraphale believes that Crowley doesn't know Aziraphale didn't save him during The Fall and how could he ever really love him if he knew? How could Aziraphale ever go to him like this and give Crowley everything he knows Crowley has desired for so long without telling him the truth about Aziraphale's role in Crowley's Fall-- but then, Aziraphale assumes, he'd lose Crowley forever? So this has always been a pipe dream for Aziraphale-- fantasies from a world where they ever stood a chance of being together-- never really something that could be reality and here it is, starting, happening *now*...

...after six. thousand. years. of living with this guilt and in the last moments in which he will ever see Crowley before he heads to his likely death, with no time to tell him the truth and beg for his forgiveness, no time to ever know what their lives might be like if they could be together.

As Crowley, unbeknownst to Aziraphale, mused dramatically, if not inaccurately, earlier in the season... it's always too late.

It's punishment, in Aziraphale's mind. That's what Crowley's proposal, his confession, is now. It's his Fall, whether he falls or not when he leaves the bookshop for Heaven. It's karmic retribution-- it's God, finally saying something, and what she's saying is:

Look at what you've done, Aziraphale...

Look at how he loves you.

He was never unforgivable.

You are.

Aziraphale might be erased from existence once he gets to Heaven and he knows that's a possibility but he basically is dying here. Crowley is killing him. Crowley has pointed that silver bullet gun straight at his head and fired but he's missed and the bullet isn't in Aziraphale's teeth, it's gone through him.

Crowley, here, tears in his eyes, asking for whatever time they have. An eternity? Impossible, unlikely. Angel and demon. One day, the war will begin again-- another war to end all wars, like all the ones they've fell more and more in love during throughout history-- but it might be the one where Heaven or Hell wins and they're doomed to spend eternity apart. Crowley has said before he thinks the real war is humanity versus Heaven and Hell and that sounds like he thinks there's a chance they could survive it but who knows? They don't know. They're immortal beings who live like humans and that's, of late, included a sense of mortality. They don't know how much time they have left and Crowley is asking for all of it. He is asking for whatever time they have left to be spent together, openly loving one another, and what he doesn't know is what Aziraphale knows:

That they're already out of time.

Crowley is proposing marriage unaware that Aziraphale is dying. It's always too late, Crowley had stated earlier but had hope that maybe it wasn't but it is. And Aziraphale?

Gah. Aziraphale...

He's never loved him more. He's never wanted him more. He wants to tell him that he wants that, too, that they can have it, that Crowley can have anything he wants, but it's not true. It's not true because they could run out the back door of the bookshop now and hop in the Bentley and end-of-Grease it up to Alpha Centauri and Heaven will still find them. Heaven and Hell will still be after them. Running away solves nothing and Crowley always, ultimately, anyway, comes back and this time-- this time-- for Crowley's own good, to save his life, Aziraphale needs him to leave the bookshop and never come back.

And the moment that Crowley confesses that he loves him and that he knows Aziraphale loves him in return and that they've both known this, forever, and asks him if he can be allowed to just love him, Aziraphale loves him so much in return that he'll break his heart to save him from dying.

Dying is... not on, as High!Crowley put it in 1827 lol, but suicide-ish attempts are, if it's Aziraphale's turn this time.

So he twists the knife. He hides the goats as pigeons and he looks at Crowley and does a bit of this:

...only with the exact opposite intent. In the Job minisode, Crowley cannot speak aloud his true intentions. (Something he can finally do in the S2 finale, when he declares his love for Aziraphale.) He cannot tell Aziraphale outrightly that he had zero desire whatosever to kill Job's kids and animals and doesn't plan on actually doing it and, in fact, is actively engaged in a bit of bait-and-switch to make it look like he's doing what he's supposed to be doing as mandated by Heaven! this time as well as Hell (a nice little extra bit of paralleling to the end of S2 and Aziraphale, there.) He wants Aziraphale to believe him enough to allow him to pull it off because saving the kids and the pets (and protecting Aziraphale from any harm that might come to him if he gets in the way of what Crowley's been asked to do) matters more to Crowley than Aziraphale believing him...

...and believing him here means believing *in* him. Believing that they are on the same side and it's their own side and they're in it together. Crowley has to lie to him here *and it works for a moment*. It's really important to note that *it works*. Aziraphale believes that Crowley can do this and that he wants to-- that he not only can but he *longs* (lol) to "kill the blameless kids of Job"-- but it's all in Crowley's wording. He isn't *actually* lying. He *does* long to kill the blameless kids of Job like how he killed the blameless goats of Job-- because he "killed the blameless goats of Job" by turning them into pigeons. So he's really saying to Aziraphale that he longs to *fake the deaths* of the blameless kids of Job and plans to in the same way that he did the goats. In that moment, though? It didn't matter if Crowley was lying or telling the truth. There was only one goal--

--to get Aziraphale to walk away.

To get Aziraphale to leave, for his own safety, and let Crowley handle this. Better that he misunderstand Crowley and be disappointed in him and think him a lost cause than to get himself into trouble. Crowley out here loving Aziraphale that much in the days of Bildad the Shuite. (This poor mfer. Six. Thousand. Years lol.)

So what caused Crowley's plan to save Aziraphale in the Job era to not work?

One of the pigeons bleated, right?

Aziraphale heard it and realized that Crowley hadn't been lying so much as he had been trying to protect Aziraphale from his plan of subterfuge against the Almighty and Satan. The difference is that there are no bleating pigeons in the S2 finale... there's just *a whole certain famous other kind of damn bird instead* and its *absence* from the scene is the big emotional gut punch moment. And we all know it but I'll gif it anyway since this is already a depressing meta (cottage in the south downs cottage in the south downs...)...

...and that *is* the point. Because unlike back in the Bildad the Shuite days, there is no bleating pigeon (at least, not yet) to make Crowley realize that all is not what it seems and that Aziraphale is trying to lie to him and get him to leave to protect him from Heaven.

As Aziraphale is like mortally wounded here by Crowley's confession of love and is so not going to recover from this, he's now got to not only get Crowley to leave feeling like Aziraphale rejected being their own team for Heaven, he has to now do it with all of it out in the open-- with Crowley having openly confessed love for him, with him having asked for them to be together. He's not just going to have to frustrate Crowley more than he ever has before and get him to leave more angry than he was before, he has to, instead, smash into little tiny bits the very beautiful, very passionate, beating heart of the being he has loved since he met him *making the stars* in the bloody sky here...

The only way to get Crowley to go now is to make Crowley think he's rejecting the idea of loving him. Aziraphale honestly can't even sell the idea that he *doesn't* love Crowley because Crowley won't believe it-- he knows Aziraphale does and he's said as much in his whole marriage proposal here. So it has to be that Crowley thinks Aziraphale chose Heaven over loving him. Chose being an angel. That he really meant all of those 'hereditary enemies' and 'you're a demon' moments and to sell that, he sells it.

(You're a dark horse, Mr. Fell, Nina said of him in 2.01... the same turn of phrase Crowley uses when surprised by the secret skills and narrative power of Jane Austen later on in the pub.)

Aziraphale does love himself a bit of theatre. A bit of a disappearing act. The West End, The West End...

...our Nefertiti-fooling fellow...

He sells it with:

Well, of course you said no, *you're* the bad guys...

Come with me... I'll run, it you can be *my second-in-command*...

We can be together. *Angels*. Doing *good*...

...oh, Crowley... nothing lasts forever...

For his final act, The Marvelous Mr. Fell will saw his ineffable husband's heart in half by spewing a litany of everything he can think of to say that will piss him off enough to make him leave the bookshop broken-hearted enough to never come back.

Only someone put a miracle blocker on here because, try as he might and good heavens (pardon the pun), Aziraphale is *trying* here...

...this turnip is not turning into a damn inkwell.

Crowley finally starts to go-- it's looking promising. Finally, Aziraphale thinks, this misery might end. Six thousand years of wanting to speak of all of this between them and hoping for some happiness when-- if-- it could maybe someday arrive, if it even could-- and it's the worst moment of Aziraphale's existence and he knows it is the same for Crowley.

Crowley stops and the "do you hear that?" And no, Aziraphale doesn't hear anything, he just has never been more upset and Crowley needs to just go because Aziraphale can't handle another moment of this, how could it possibly get worse?

Nightingales. Of course.

A call back to S1's "no more world-class composers/little restaurants where they know you/gravalax and dill sauce/old bookshops" but this time, it's "no nightingales". There's Armageddon coming that neither of them know about in this moment. It's still a 'someday, they'll try again' concept to them in this scene, not an extremely immediate threat, as Aziraphale doesn't learn about The Second Coming until after this. So the end of the world that Crowley references here is the end of *their* world and that means no nightingales. No romance. No *them*, together. Worth remembering that Crowley thought, up until maybe what? Five minutes ago? That they were headed to breakfast at the Ritz together. They should have been sitting there together *in this moment*, is what he's saying. Miracling the pianist to play "A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square" and gazing at one another over teapots and mimosas and croissants.

That's gone, since you chose Heaven instead, is what Crowley states and Aziraphale knows it because, God help him (no, literally, GOD HELP HIM! WHERE THE HELL DID YOU GO OFF TO THIS SEASON, FRANCES?!), it's what he's *trying* to make happen.

You idiot, says the once-Bildad the Shuite, who thought he was taking his beloved to the ox rib special this morning and not getting dumped for an old floating head and the cinematic world's most contentious to-go cup of coffee, we could have been... us.

Not really a part of the theory here, just the observation that Crowley's confession/proposal begins with him unable to say "a couple", in case this all goes pear-shaped and he needs to have never said something that romantic, so he says instead "a team", "a group-- of the two of us". He says it without saying it. But, by the end? He just says "us." He *present*-tenses it. He's like forget everything else, angel, we could have just kept on being us because we both know what we are. We don't need to find the right turn of phrase or even the most specific human word for it. We are just *us* and we could have kept on with that but you chose the mentality of your abusive family and asked me to be what I'm not and I still love you because I *know* you but I can't be with you like that and *you* know that.

And he kisses him. Because Franny McD says you ain't suffered enough yet, Aziraphale lol. Should I just gif it while we're miserable? If you've read this far, a month has passed and hopefully, you've taken breaks and I do apologize but I'm gonna gif it because yeah. Here we go, folks...

God, make it stop, pleads Aziraphale to literal God and here comes Crowley with the S1 wall slam parallel, all dammit, angel, I know you've wanted us to snog for centuries and this is our last chance.

I know people have opinions about this kiss and I know we're all posting them here, obviously myself included, but while I've seen a lot of like... 'Crowley knows it's the only time they ever will be able to because Aziraphale is leaving him for Heaven' and 'Crowley wants to remind Aziraphale what he's giving up and could have had' and 'Crowley tries the kiss to see if it'll change Aziraphale's mind' takes-- and I agree with all of those things and think they're all right-- I've not seen a lot of 'Crowley kisses Aziraphale *for Aziraphale*' and I think that's a big part of it, too.

Crowley really isn't stupid. Not when it comes to Aziraphale wanting him. It would be honestly hard to spend a zillion lifetimes on Earth and not get it after like...

And Crowley understands Aziraphale's particular brand of religious trauma more than most, since he has a variant version of it himself. He understands that where his whole thing is that he's very much *not* an angel anymore, that Aziraphale's identity is wrapped up in being one and the conflicts he has with Heaven and while Crowley is not yet quite hearing what Nina said-- that she just got out of an abusive relationship and that she's not yet ready to be with Maggie and needs time-- and marrying that to Aziraphale and Heaven (especially because Aziraphale is showing exactly zero signs of trying to get out of his relationship with Heaven lol), Crowley wants Aziraphale to have had what he (Aziraphale) wanted, even if it was for only a moment. He can't go with him. This is the *one* scenario where Crowley cannot follow where Aziraphale goes, where he can't come to him and rescue him, because Aziraphale has said he doesn't want him to. Aziraphale wants to go and do this and the only way he'll take Crowley is if Crowley wants to become an angel again, which Crowley will not do.

And damned if there isn't a part of Aziraphale that thinks that if The Metatron can really be trusted, wouldn't that be something? That if he gets up there to Heaven and he really is made Supreme Archangel and if Crowley changes his mind, if he comes back, like he always does... if he storms out and leaves but then misses him too much and takes the elevator up... then maybe Aziraphale could make him an angel again and while Crowley hears in Aziraphale offering that you aren't good enough as a demon-- you're not good, period and even if he doesn't totally believe that Aziraphale really thinks that but knows Aziraphale has enough religious conflict that it's a problem for their relationship, what Aziraphale *really* means is... I could fix it.

I could go back and un-Fall you. I could take away your pain. I could stop your suffering. I'd have the *power* to do it when I don't right now and it kills me, every day. I could right the wrong I did, the sin I committed-- the real Original Sin-- six thousand years ago when I betrayed you, when Heaven betrayed you.

I could do right by you, the way She never did.

I am going to Heaven to either have the power to do that or to be obliterated into non-existence and I don't totally know which, though surviving is not looking promising, but all I know is that it's too dangerous for you to follow me right now until I do know so I'd rather hurt you than see you dead.

You want to be with me and I am afraid it will lead to your destruction so I need to say anything to put the breaks on your attempt and make you back off. To a lesser extent, I've done it before. Can do again.

Only this time, no hope of the possible, future picnic, I'm afraid...

It really is the worst possible Aziraphale nightmare here like... everything he's ever wanted. Six millennia of wanting to pull Crowley close and he has to reject him or Crowley could die. Fanfic season here said Coffee Shop AU and also a reverse-Fuck or Die for the ages. People complaining that it's awkward? YES. It's supposed to be. Crowley has no idea that Aziraphale is facing a round of sudden death here and was just hoping for his one fabulous kiss and vavoom. Even if it didn't change anything-- he wanted *Aziraphale* to feel that. To know how much he's wanted this for so long and to have it, even if they can't again. The intent is terribly romantic, as is Aziraphale flailing in the middle of it and giving in because he is made of strong, halo-exploding stuff here but he's wanted this forever. He goes up on his toes, he leans in, his hands flail around and he touches Crowley's back. He *shouldn't* do any of this if he's trying to meet his goal of getting Crowley to leave because it gave Crowley hope. It might have even been what motivated Crowley to stay outside and not go right away, or at least a part of it. But Aziraphale had to because he loves him and he couldn't help it.

Then, *sob*, The Michael Sheen eviscerating all of us here...

For anyone who might still be saying that is an "I didn't want his kiss" face... hard, HARD, VERY HARD disagree. That is "I didn't want *this* kiss, like this, right now." That is a man-shaped being who was just kissed by the love of his life for what may have been the first time but, at minimum, is for what he believes will be the *last* time. (I'm still out here holding out some hope for Blitz, Part 3-- a nice first kiss after they kill some Zombie Nazis with Chekhov's derringer in the bookshop but I digress...somehow, even if this entire long meta is one long digression, I digress lol...)

It's the face of a man gutted by the fact that this, in his wildest dreams, was not supposed to happen like this and he's been alive for damn ever at this point so he's had *all* the wildest dreams. And a lot of them, let's be real, have centered around Crowley doing just this. Exactly this. Crowley ain't wrong with the 'grabbing him by the collar and kissing him senseless in the middle of the bookshop' thing. He's wanted to do it for centuries. And the middle of the bookshop bit? That's important, too. This is their home. It's *their* home, even if Crowley is technically homeless. It's safe for him in here and Aziraphale has made it so. It's where they've spent thousands of hours together, happy and safe in each other's company, and here they are, bouille-bouile-bouile-baby-ing finally and it's a complete and utter, unmitigated trash truck dumpster fire.

Honestly, this was a better kiss than in S2 lol. S1 laying down though how long they've been dreaming about it (and having Crowley start listing animals that are in Aziraphale's nonsense magic spell, like he flashes back to 1941 when thinking about the end of the world and kissing Aziraphale in the bookshop... so you can see why I'm moderately hopeful that maybe they did kiss then, once, before then trying to never again until Crowley kisses Aziraphale in 2.06.)

I'm going to bring this back around now to the comparison I made above with Crowley and Jesus and talk about how 2.06's end scenes are also like the last temptation of Christ. Good Omens makes it pretty clear that Aziraphale is the tempter, really, of the two of them, in their relationship. Crowley can't say no to him and Aziraphale has learned it and loves to puppy eyes Crowley into anything he wants.

Crowley knows it and is fine with it. He's smitten and happy to be wrapped around Aziraphale's finger. Crowley has tempted Aziraphale and we see that in S2 with the ox rib. He is, himself, just by existing, tempting to Aziraphale. But in terms of temptation carrying with it a bit of manipulation and *that* kind of tempting being what's demonic in nature? Then Aziraphale is, and always has been, the demon of the two of them. This is true into the end of S2, as while there is almost nothing that Crowley would deny Aziraphale, there is really only one thing and that's to change who he is for him. To become an angel again, to work for Heaven again, after what they've done to him and Aziraphale. So the end of S2 is then Aziraphale's temptation-- it's a test, of sorts, for Crowley, even if Aziraphale doesn't intend for it to be. Crowley resists the temptation. Even for Aziraphale, he won't follow the path of darkness for himself and become something he's not. Crowley-Jesus. (Aziraphale-Satan S3 incoming lol.)

And if you've been reading all of this right then you know what happens next and what it means from the POV of this guilt-ridden Aziraphale...

I honestly don't think Aziraphale is really that angry *with Crowley* at this point-- I think he's just angry. He's reached his limit and then some. He has a lot of simmering, under the surface rage on a good day that only bubbles over when he's stressed by a situation he can't control and here is the ultimate one, really. He's a little mad at Crowley because they've waited countless years for that and in an argument, while ironically probably kind of perfect for them, is not really how *either* of them wanted it to be... but, mostly, Aziraphale is just angry that he can't have any of those moments at all. That they're out of time. That they had all this time and they never really could be safely together and that he's been haunted for six thousand years of the image of his fluffy cloud of redheaded sunshine, bloodied and stricken, and then tossed to Hell while Aziraphale was powerless to stop it. He's never seen those eyes since and he loves the snake ones. He loves all of Crowley with all he has but he's never been allowed to *have* him and never felt safe enough to try and now it's all over. And he still has to make Crowley fucking leave this bookshop for his plan of self-sacrifice to fucking work here so...

...I forgive you. It's the worst thing he can think of. The thing Crowley always hates. The thing that he knows makes Crowley feel lesser and demonic, even if Aziraphale has always, always meant it as an I love you. He even spits it out to Crowley with an almost self-deprecating, referential tone to it-- like "here we go again-- you say you love me and I say 'I forgive you' because I can't say anything else, can I?" The anger is laced underneath it and all the pain but he's intentionally referencing how this this the thing he says whenever Crowley says they can be their own side. He's trying to claim that nothing has changed in all of these years, when they both know that everything has changed since S1 and the bandstand. That's what makes it hurt both of them even more. Aziraphale chooses to say "I forgive you" because he knows that Crowley has never heard it for how Aziraphale means it and Aziraphale is a little bitter about it and lets it show in the moment, since Aziraphale's I forgive you always really means...

I can't stand to see you in pain and if there's any power in me as an angel to stop it, then I will do that so I forgive you and may that make it easier, may that make it all okay, even though I know it won't.

And just before saying I forgive you, Aziraphale's mouth works and he almost-- almost-- says I love you instead... what Crowley would really give anything to hear.

You can see the 'l' forming there, the beginning of "love", what he *really* wanted to say... what Crowley himself didn't even actually explicitly say. Crowley said it without saying it. He called them a couple without saying that word, asked for eternity without fully asking for it, said he loved him by acknowledging that they had both been pretending, but Crowley was terrified and so he said the things in a way that made it obvious what he was saying and asking for but, so unused to not speaking in code are they, that Crowley didn't say he loved Aziraphale, not directly. He did say it. He just didn't say it in those words.

And for a second, Aziraphale almost does.

He can't stand that he's breaking Crowley's heart. He can't stand that Crowley has kissed him and Aziraphale only briefly kissed him back, only barely touched him, when he really wanted to go at him like an ox rib and never let him go, and he starts to say the truth because no part of him really *wants* to be lying like this to Crowley. But he stops. And not even just because he needs Crowley to leave the shop to save his life but because, in the last four minutes, Crowley has confessed love and proposed and they've kissed and Aziraphale, pretty sure he actually died somewhere in the middle there and he's now stuck somewhere in one of Dante's worst circles of Hell lol, just cannot *also* have this be the moment where he says "I love you" to Crowley.

It's not even false hope that maybe they'll somehow have more time. With Heaven breathing down his neck in the form of The Metatron, Aziraphale has no real hope of that. He just always dreamed of telling him and not like this. He doesn't want Crowley to hear it like this, either, not as a part of a rejection. The anger, instead, surfaces, because why can't he and Crowley just *have* this?! How the hell did Gabriel and Beezlebub get to fuck off to Alpha Centauri after dating for ten minutes when he and Crowley have spent bloody eons in queer pining hell over here? What did they ever do that was so wrong to deserve this? Why was Crowley asking questions so terrible? Why have they had to spend thousands of years pretending not to love each other as if love-- the epitome of the angelic-- was unholy? Why, Aziraphale is wondering, now that they are out of time, did he ever spend so many years terrified when, in the end, it all ended tragically anyway?

How many of those years could Aziraphale have spent loving Crowley the way they ought to have been able to have and denied themselves of for so long?

And then Crowley finally does it. Tells him "don't bother" about the forgiveness-- about the love, as Aziraphale has always meant it-- and he leaves. It worked. The anger and pain and saying "I forgive you" after that kiss... it worked. And Crowley leaves and Aziraphale, alone, is a complete mess of broken and furious and broken some more.

Crowley, as we know, doesn't get to see this moment. Muriel does! Great for fic! Hilarious by show standards that the new angel who is literally being ordered to take over Aziraphale's home against his will is who witnesses the aftermath of the intimate moment our angel has been craving, oh, just since before the dawn of humanity over here.

He touches his lips, his hand trembles... have you all noticed that Aziraphale is literally fucking *tasting and eating* what of himself Crowley left in his mouth here? He's pulling every bit of Crowley to his tongue from his teeth and *swallowing*, like he knows it's all of him he'll ever again be able to consume, like he's committing how he tastes to memory for the last like, who knows, ten? fifteen? twenty minutes? of his own existence that he knows he probably has left...

Jesus fucking Christ, Michael Sheen...

This is all without yet mentioning the single most under-analyzed line in S2 that calls into question a ton of stuff, which is this beauty from Shax, right off the top of 2.01:

"Beezlebub's put some of the lesser demons on half-rations."

What does this have to do with Aziraphale consuming Crowley's kiss like it's the most scrumptious thing he's ever tasted (because it is) and being furious that it'll be their last?

Because that Shax line casually confirms that demons eat. Do they eat human food or some sort of demon food or both? Who knows, really, but they're *supposed* to eat. Ok, but is it just a demon thing? No, because it ties to Crowley's comments in S1 about how he complained that the food wasn't really that good lately when hanging out with Lucifer and The Gang, which then implies that, at least back then, *angels* ate, too. Eating was a normal thing. Over time, though, we know that the higher angels have come to see eating as human and pedestrian and not something befitting of an angel. Some demons eat-- even Crowley eats, if less than and differently than Aziraphale-- but the angels think it's beneath them and if we have confirmation via Shax in S2 that they are supposed to be eating and basically only don't die because they're immortal beings and not human, even if they have human corporations, then the show is saying that all of these angels are fucking starving themselves.

They're doing what they're told and denying their own nature and their own needs in the process.

S2 also shows that with the ox rib, right?

Aziraphale went *at* that thing. He'd never eaten at all in a couple thousand years after being told it was un-angelic and so when he tasted food for the first time, he went so overboard that he's been Mr. Prim and Proper with his napkins and table etiquette ever since out of embarrassment over Crowley watching him food orgasm once-- and that's the metaphor there, as we've all figured out. Our show that has a sex worker named Mrs. Sandwich is all about its ongoing food-as-sex metaphor. S2 even opens with the hilarious turnabout from S1 as a "thank you for my pornography", "why do you consume *that*?" Gabriel shows up at the bookshop-- naked-- and has a food orgasm trying hot chocolate for the first time.

Gabe, babe, Aziraphale does not need the play-by-play here....

Mah point is... mah point is that Tumblr is maxing me at 30 images per post and so you'll just have to picture Crowley slurring "dolphins" while I get to my actual point here...

Mah point is while this is a whole separate analysis almost and one that many of you have already done in different ways re: food & sex on the show, my point here is that starving yourself of food in Good Omens is analogous to being touch-starved or love-deprived and before someone yells at me about how angelic beings don't necessarily need sex or are by nature not into sex unless they make an Effort, I agree with you and Neil Gaiman. I'm just also saying the show is suggesting that they all have human corporations and that many of those human corporations are not sex-averse so for those of them that are not, they're literally out here touch-starved and/or sex-starved here in different ways. But, you say, maybe Crowley is hungry (goodness knows, Crowley *is hungry* lol) but Aziraphale eats all the time!

Yeah. Aziraphale eats *food*, all the time. But he isn't touched all the time. He doesn't have sex all the time. He isn't kissed all the time. The 2.06 scene shows him *physically* making that metaphor of food and sex real for us-- we watch him *consume* what remains of Crowley's kiss--showing that he's desperate for it and deprived of it. He's starved for it, to a point of trembling hands and rolling every bit of Crowley's lingering taste around his mouth like he's taking on every last bite of the best crepe he could ever imagine in all his days...

...and then being, understandably, full of rage that this is the only time he's going to ever have Crowley-- and all he's ever going to have of him, when Crowley just offered all of himself-- forever.

And then The Metatron comes back and is Aziraphale ready to go to his death now? And, Friends, Aziraphale...

...is absolutely not.

He's turned away from the door, barely containing tears. When the door opened and he turned, he half-hoped it'd be Crowley but it was grr That Bastard instead. He looks out the window and Crowley is still out there...

...he left but he didn't really *leave*... and it somehow then still isn't over and will someone please just take Aziraphale out back and angel-shoot him? He can't take any more of this.

What about the shop? he asks, in a moment of desperation and terror over what's to come and some blind, stupid hope that he can somehow get out of all of this with him and Crowley still alive and The Metatron, who anticipated this, tells him Muriel lives here now. Aziraphale looks around the home he's made for him and Crowley for the last 223 years and his favorite books and possessions. Crowley's hat from 1941 is on the hat stand, the horse statue is where Crowley put his glasses back when he trusted him, back when he let Aziraphale see his pretty yellow eyes whenever Aziraphale wanted in recent years... before he just put his glasses back on now and closed himself off again.

Aziraphale is never going to see those eyes he loves again. He didn't even get to kiss Crowley without the sunglasses on before it was all over.

Even Gabriel had something to take up to Heaven with him to remind him of the demon he loved but Aziraphale goes to Heaven and to his death empty-handed because he pushed Crowley away to save him from all of this and, in the final push, he looks at Crowley standing there by The Bentley, all that secretly optimistic, beautiful, romantic hope about him still in him from the angel Aziraphale first met, all the awareness there of Aziraphale-- the only being who really knows him-- and so he's still waiting, still hoping. It goes back a few hours to the ball.

I'll be back. I won't leave you on your own.

But it's Aziraphale's call now and he gets into the elevator. The Metatron wins because Aziraphale's love for Crowley wins. He'll die before he lets anything happen to him, even if he wants to run to that car and to him but where would they run *to*? There's no place to go. Crowley has always been wrong about that. They can't go off together. There's no place safe from Heaven for them.

So Aziraphale gets into the elevator at The Dirty Donkey, leaving Crowley alone in the street once again, just with less hope this time than in 1967.

So Aziraphale leaves the bookshop this time, instead of going into it like he did in S1, when he left Crowley in the street, standing beside The Bentley, while clutching a different book this time-- Agnes Nutter's prophecies in his hand versus The Book of Life and its threatened erasure hanging over Aziraphale like the specter that it is. What was predicted about the future versus erasure from the past and all time. Nothing to see here, Crowley! Everything is as it's seems.

Everything is tickety-boo!

Tickety-boo?

Yes, which is also what Aziraphale-as-Crowley said... when he was kidnapped by Heaven and Hell in S1, remember? When he was taken from Earth to be sentenced to death... along *with* Crowley.

This time, Aziraphale is shutting Crowley out again. Telling him 'mind how you go' again, this time a bit more, uh, emphatically lol. And on their heels, again, the end of the world. Arma-bloody-geddon 2.0: The Second Coming.

Aziraphale heard The Metatron saying that was the plan-- as, of course, our villain walked away and meant for it not to be totally heard, further implying that they have no plans to really make Aziraphale the Supreme Archangel and that this is all a remix of Fraulein Greta Klauschmidt. That then makes this all somehow *even worse*... because now Aziraphale gets in the elevator to ride up to his death to save Crowley but now he knows that it was all for nothing.

War is coming. The planet they love will be destroyed. Crowley, if he knows him well enough, will likely die trying to save it. When he does, he'll still be damned to Hell for all of eternity while Aziraphale thinks he likely won't exist at all once he makes it upstairs and Michael finally gets to Book of Life him. Let the other angels think he's been played for a sucker. Better they think him a fool than that they come for Crowley.

He doesn't want to Fall and doesn't wish for it. If they take his memories as punishment, and they almost certainly will, he won't remember any of the moments he spent with Crowley and even if they could have eternity together in Hell if the world is destroyed, he wouldn't wish Crowley the pain of being around him when he didn't remember anything.

Aziraphale only finding out about The Second Coming in the moment before he gets on the elevator-- *after* everything happens with Crowley-- is a million times worse because now Aziraphale is riding to his death knowing that everything they've done in six thousand years doesn't matter and that the events of S1 didn't matter because all it did was delay the inevitable end of the world and everything Aziraphale loves is about to be destroyed.

That, apparently, was God's ineffable, Great Plan.

All of that is what is on Aziraphale's face on the ride up to Heaven in the final splitscreen.

In that splitscreen, Crowley, for what it's worth, is visually echoing the driving back from Tadfield bit that leads to the "tickety-boo" moment of Aziraphale lying to him by omission. He looks close to a parallel to the S1 moment where he suddenly yelled:

"DUCKS!"

They're what water slides off of. In this context? They were also the thing itching at the back of Crowley's mind-- the not quite right thing, the puzzle he couldn't quite figure out, the question he coudln't yet quite answer... until he could. That's positive, actually. It means there might be something for him to realize, even if that realization might come too late in the short term. (They will solve everything and be fine, memory-intact, immortal beings in love who go off together by the end of it. This is all just until then.)

Ducks are also, sort of, the be all and end all of Good Omens. Crowley knows how to take care of them, after all, when others do not. You feed them frozen peas-- they are good for them and they love them, too. (Don't feed him coffee, you Metatron idiot! He only ever drank one mug of it in S1 and it led to the *points above* see: tickety-boo Aziraphale lying to Crowley paralleling sequence of scenes.) [The "do you have one, single, better idea?" scene is Aziraphale drinking coffee, for reference.]

So, yeah, by comparison here... Aziraphale, you are a duck lol. You have been fed bread by idiots for far too long when, really, you need to be eating frozen peas. Crowley knows this and he knows how to take care of you. With any luck, he's about to have his duck-moment-paralleling epiphany any moment now, though I fear you're already going to be memory-wiped and fallen to Hell when he does. That's okay, though, because this is the main scene that still needs a go-around in paralleling and we know Crowley knows where the dungeons are down there from unfortunate, personal experience.

Cottage in the south downs, cottage in the south downs, cottage in the south downs, cottage....

Notes: Hi! If you have made it all the way here, thank you for reading. I hope it was worth the read for you. You all write such great stuff that I felt inspired to put my lit and film studies and psych background to use and jump in a bit. Thanks for indulging me. I also wish to note that there is a gif above that is by @fuckyeahgoodomens but for some reason, the credit was not working properly so I just wanted to make sure you knew who was providing us the visual joy.

#ineffable husbands #good omens #crowley x aziraphale #good omens meta #long post #good omens theory #i am not kidding you this is kinda long but there are gifs and jokes and i brought snacks?#aziraphale #crowley #good omens 2 #good omens 2 spoilers #gabriel

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tumblingxelian · 4 months ago

Note

If I may ask with an open enough mind, might I hear out your thoughts on the character of Chloe Bourgeois? I don't expect an answer right out the gate so don't rush on my account. I'm merely trying to collect varying perspectives over what's become a uniquely controversial character.

Oh my that is a doozy of a question, I've debated no less than three separate videos on the topic and multiple essays to boot. Still, she's on my mind and the thing I am working on is obstructing me from modelling or writing but quires breaks to let stuff load so I have time for a longer ask:

So, what are my thoughts on Chloe Bourgeois?

Exactly where to start is rather tricky, so forgive any digressions or rambles.

Chloe is thematically the everyday reality of an Akumatized person.

What I mean by this is that Akuma victims are people in states of emotional distress, tribulation or trouble. Who thanks to the enabling of a power greater than themselves are both encouraged and enabled to lash out at others with borrowed power.

These people are meant to be sympathetic, their emotional tribulation taken advantage of, their situation, methods and thought process untenable. But they do need to be stopped from doing harm, and then healing needs to begin, with some effort made to redress the issue that led to them lashing out in the first place.

Akuma victims are the supernatural theme, Chloe is the reality.

Of course, some might claim she has no reason to have issues but...

Her mother is negligent and largely absent. The time they spent together prior to Queen Wasp, consisted of Chloe praising, giving gifts and trying to please Audrey. Only to be torn down, ignored, rejected or have her efforts disparaged. The woman doesn't even get her name right and the only means by which she earned even a scrap of approval was through being cruel. Something explicitly encouraged by the show's main character which is ???.

Though it seems Audrey got bored with her fairly quickly regardless.

Audrey is unrelentingly hostile, selfish and cruel and encourages these traits in others and only avoids turning them on a person if they are sufficiently useful, or a match for her in viciousness. You are either her victim, her tool, or a conspirator. This is a hilariously awful parent, the damage she can do limited only by her sheer lack of interest.

Andre is somehow worse.

I am going to ignore the reading undertones of subtext into things but suffice to say that ratchets him up from just a bad parent to kill him with fire parent.

What we see with Andre is a man who explicitly taught Chloe to lie, cheat, intimidate, extort and bribe people to get what she wants. She is fourteen, and has been doing this since before she was in double digits. She's not bad because there's something innately wrong with her, she behaves badly because she's been explicitly taught that was the proper way to conduct herself.

We know full well Andre is capable of reigning Chloe in, be it gently in the Christa episode or with disciplinary action in Kung Food. However he only does this when it suits him, or her actions might cause him problems. For all his alleged affection for her, or her alleged influence on him, Chloe's always on the end of a leash Andre can and will tug back on the moment he feels like it.

This isn't just bad because it's so blatantly hypocritical and self serving. It's bad, because it means he enables Chloe's most self destructive and harmful traits so long as they don't impact 'him'. Given also that he is the one who, to put it charitably, raised her, that means the consequences and fallout of her actions should fall on him.

The fact he is presumably the one who encouraged Chloe to impersonate his wife, given Audrey didn't start rewarding that behavior until Queen Wasp, is also bad parenting. Like even if you ignore the disgust factor, its just fucking awful parenting and like everything else he taught her. It contributed to the fact Chloe is a social pariah hated by most people she has to spend time around.

Because let's get to the next stage, subversions!

In most shows like ML, Chloe as "The mean girl" would be popular, or at least feared, able to pose a threat in a social context, and is usually insulated from the more magical issues.

None of this applies to Chloe.

Even if we don't treat Origins as the shows starting point, she's already only tangentially involved in class stuff. Her fathers hotels own doorman outright says she has no friends, extremely out of pocket of him. & Origins sees one of the first things said to him being that Chloe is a brat and he halfway ditches her before 24 hours are up, and keeps her at nominal arms length for the rest of the series.

We can talk about how there's reasons for this, sure, but the thing that's interesting here is the subversion.

Chloe's mean-ness has not won her friends or influence as it does other mean girls in fiction, such as Heathers or Mean Girls.

Instead, it's made her barely tolerated by her peers and this only grows worse for her as the show goes on leading to her ensuing isolation which only worsens her condition and attitude. This is something Chloe is even varying shades of aware of, as she tearfully confessed to Ladybug when hiding from her Akumatized father. She knows something is wrong, but doing things differently goes against everything her parents taught her or exemplified, so it's not a shock she struggles.

Similarly, compare how Bonnie from Kim Possible could actually out-compete Kim for the role of cheer captain.

Can Chloe beat Marinette in anything?

No, not really, or least the narrative never lets her do so even when she does have the skills for it, such as 8 years of ballet losing to nice vibes.

This is much less interesting than the previous point because it's basically just the writers using Chloe as a speed bump which gets boring after a while.

Then consider how Totally Spies own Mean Girl, Mandy is rarely tied to the actual adventures save maybe in a way other civilians are; leaving altercations with Clover as civilian affairs.

Does this apply to Chloe?

Fuck no XD

Chloe's frequently targeted by AKuma, even when she either shouldn't be singled out, (Ivan, everyone was scared) or for comparatively minor transgressions (Nathanial, his teacher screamed at, insulted & shook him) or outright targeted by the main villain of the show. (One who has known her since she was an infant!)

Even before she had a Miraculous, Chloe was a frequent target of violent murder attempts. But this is largely treated as neutral, or even as comeuppance for bad behaviour. The issue is, the sheer scale of what she's being targeted with is so completely disportionate to what she did, assuming she even did things wrong, that it comes off as more unfair than anything else, & liable to give trauma.

Especially as the show has double standards at times.

I think often-times the writers neglected to actually think through their karmic punishments for Chloe.

Take Pixelator,

Chloe is the one who recognized Jagged, helped her father, and actually did her fucking job, but is the only student not rewarded with a concert ticket despite having done nothing to piss Jagged off.

Or how when her locker was broken into she's largely dismissed and needs to threaten the principal with her father to get a response. One might say this is abusing her power, but A, it's her dads power and B, we see with Lila later that the principle will basically just bow to whoever can make the bigger fuss. This isn't a Chloe issue it's a Damocles issue and I think being upset people broke into her locker isn't exactly unfair.

Similarly, I noted above how Chloe loses to Marinette even when she shouldn't logically do so.

A bigger example of the narrative short hand delivered is the fact we see other characters do stuff Chloe does and get free rides.

IE, Kagami can dramatically strut into a fencing hall talking the most boastful shit, actually lose more or less legitimately, Akumatize and still be treated with sympathy and become a hero.

Chloe boastfully auditions to be Ladybug for a music video, but actually is the best audition scene, but loses out to positive vibes, gets angry & through her father lashes out, gets punished & no one gives a shit about her side of the story.

To be clear, I like Kagami, I find this comparison interesting, I just don't think the show realized that it did this or does stuff like this a lot.

That whole episode also demonstrates what I said at the start, about Chloe embodying the thematic of Akuma, IE, anger or distress, powerful sponsor, lashing out, ETC.

So the double standard in how she's framed and treated VS Kagami is framed and treated becomes a weakness of the writing and show.

We also see this with stuff like her & Marinette sabotaging Kagami, but Marinette largely getting portrayed sympathetically for doing so while Chloe isn't.

This creates the impression the problem isn't Chloe's bad behavior, it's with her mere existence.

IE, she's the audience and writer's punching bag/designated target, so it feels like the writers just kind of don't bother a lot of the time actually making her wrong or thinking through the implications of their story beats with her, or other characters' behaviour.

This stuff is present in Season 1, much more overt in season 2 and basically caps off season 3 which is where I stopped watching.

Cos like, the villain who's known her since forever has been actively trying to utilize her through the seasons, who explicitly aimed to puther in a state of severe emotional distress, ambushed her in her own home & had her parents in his grasp.

Right after the show's hero blatantly walked back a previous ruling that kept Chloe from being Queen Bee, (& did so for selfish and if one considered HK targeting known heroes, incredibly callous reasons)

But we're meant to hate the 14 year old for responding badly?

I would also argue stuff like this is a large part of what makes Chloe such an ensemble dark horde to the fandom. Not just because one can read into things about her history and character, but because the author's hand is so heavy it actively hurts and hinders its own narrative in order to harm Chloe and so feels unfair.

Some final notes I couldn't place elsewhere:

Akuma don't usually harm their loved one's. Chloe's mother tried to kill her on sight & then kept looking for excuses to do so & finally did. Andre turned the powerful & willful Audrey into a simpering hanger on and wanted to do the same with Chloe, which again, yikes.

When fused together they declared her incapable of loving anyone but herself. A fact blatantly disproven already but even in the episode itself with her demanding their release in exchange for helping Hawk Moth. & then tried to fucking EAT HER.

Her butler, school friend and teacher seemingly love her more than her own parents.

As an aside, Sabrina's explicitly encouraged to work for Chloe by her father as it makes her "Useful" which has loads of implications. But at least one can't blame Chloe for Sabrina's character.

Madame Bustier, when Akumatized uses having "Taken care" of her father as a lure to try and get Chloe to come to her. So again, yikes if one wants to read into it as it means even as an Akuma who was upset by Chloe, Bustier perceives Andre as the threat/problem to her.

Chloe by all accounts seems to live alone in a hotel suite, not even one of the fancier, super suites but like... The walls are 50% glass with no curtains, that lead to publicly exposed areas (as we see interviews with Jagged being conducted in them) and there's almost nothing to identify it as a space she lives in. Hell, the pictures on the wall are often blank and it seems she's lived here alone since she was a toddler.

That would have calamitous impacts on a Child's psyche & development!

Despite her portrayal, Chloe was shown to be extremely good at being Queen Bee in many respects.

She almost soloed Mayura.

She is the first person shown able to resist Akuma, got civilians out of an Akuma infested train cart & protected Sabrina during the second red Akuma swarm.

She was able to quickly and easily keep up with Ladybug on the roof tops and using a similar weapon & travel style creates a visual parallel between the two which carries implications of them being counterparts.

But most especially Chloe proved herself a skilled and heroic combatant during Heroes Day; covering for the other heroes without orders, doing so easily & needing to be targeted by multiple villains all with personal ties to her to be brought down, while protecting other heroes.

But that never really gets acknowledged.

So much like with "Nearly being brutally murdered for being kind of a dick" this sense of narrative imbalance engendered sympathy from those who notice.

I also find it fascinating that Chloe is, despite spending her life surrounded by abusers and enablers both, that she, without any real guidance, managed to soften their behaviors on her own.

Yes she buys Sabrina presents in luew of saying sorry, but she also spends time with her and does fun stuff, Andre just buys her off. She wants Adrien at her side and the like, but she doesn't actually try to stop him from befriending people she hates, Gabriel tries to keep him locked up. She doesn't like losing, but compares her relatively mild huffiness or brief theatrics to Audrey's violent response to merely being snubbed.

She's already doing better than all of them despite explicitly being taught or demonstrated, or victimized with all the wrong lessons and is fourteen.

Chloe also obviously has a deeply unhealthy understanding of relationships as seenin in how she recreates her parents awful dynamic with everyone around her.

IE,

Andre fawns on Audrey, who is domineering, never satisfied and harsh at best. Chloe acts accordingly with Sabrina, while fawning on her mother and Ladybug who are much the same though for different reasons. She's internalized this deeply unhealthy dynamic and applies it to herself as much as she does to anyone else.

This is just one element of the fact she honestly seems deeply troubled on a social level. I mentioned earlier that Chloe seems to know "Something" is wrong with everyone hating her & is clearly unhappy about it. But also seems unsure how to fix it, or what the source of the problem is.

The fact she often doesn't seem to get social cues, even from people she's treating like a peer, such as Ala or Adrien, gives off the sense that her problems go deeper than just "Being a brat".

This is further emphasized by the fact that so much of her daily persona seen is her doing an impression of her mother. Or otherwise putting on a show to try and get her dad or Kim, or the principle ETC, to do something.

Because when she's "upset" it's all theatrical prancing and squeals of daddy and then it's over.

But when she's actually upset, like panicking over losing Adrien upset, or breaking down cos Ladybug chose another hero with a known identity over her (Said by Kagami in the episode so we can't pretend it's not true). Chloe usually builds up to a brief explosion followed by a collapse, or just collapses outright into a panicked, curled up state. One that in one instance seemed to be intentionally drawing comparisons to an infant, but again give what we know that says less about her & more about Andre.

Basically, Chloe's life is a performance, we rarely see the real her, because she's always trying to play a role she thinks she's meant to, in order to be liked and successful & is confused, hurt and lonely because it's not working the way her family promises or demonstrated it would.

I also think it's interesting how Marinette & Kagami both firmly instruct her to stop bothering about seating arrangements. Like, we see he react to insults and anger with anger back, but those firm instructions seemed to make her actually inclined to listen, or at least intimidate rather than rile her up.

Also on the insults front, I think it's notable with the pariah angle that Chloe did basically become an open target. No, she doesn't do herself any favors, but her efforts to do video assignments, or participate in art class getting naught but degrading insults. Or her simply not participating in Madame Bustier's birthday causing the class to collectively tear into her says a lot.

Also much like with Damocles, Chloe getting away with mean-ness is not a Chloe thing, the other students get away with it too. At most getting a mild "Well that was kind of mean" which gets shrugged off.

So again we are back into one rule for Chloe another rule for everyone else, which engenders sympathy or frustration in many of the audience.

Also I find her & Adrien's friendship conceptually fascinating. because like... Adrien outright admits that he totally understands sabotaging a train to try and win a parents love. Meaning he both can likely imagine himself doing the same and also does not grasp how fucked up it is to think one has to go to such insane lengths for someone who treats them like trash.

Am I speaking about Audrey or Gabriel?

Trick question, it's both!

As a sort of final cap off, I quite enjoy the fact that Chloe's so aggressively defiant. Yes she can get scared & panic, but like. She spent 95% of her Stoneheart kidnapping oscillating between bored, pissed off and irritated.

One can say it's a fight based trauma response and I agree, but it's also just a fun dynamic to have for a character who'd normally be relegated solely to screaming damsel.

So yeah, I think she's a fascinating character in concept and at times execution. Who subverts, twists and breaks expected tropes tied to her archetype in fascinating ways but who's handling leaves me wanting, I hope this was useful!

@princess-of-the-corner @generalluxun @maestro04yayyy you might like this post too!

MAJOR EDIT!

I can't believe I went through Chloe's entire persona section & neglected to mention the fact that her efforts to flirt with guys always come off as so awkward and in-genuine compared to her enthusiastic adoration of Ladybug.

#ML #chloe bourgeois #miraculous ladybug #Text Post #Ask

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harukamitsuki · 4 months ago

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I need Bakugou stans to realise that it's not that I hate him as a person. It's that I hate him as a character.

A lot of my favourite characters are unrepentant assholes, or assholes who are set to or have already been redeemed. Vegeta from DBZ, Ouma Kokichi from DGR: V3, Dio from JoJo, Laxus from Fairy Tail, Greed from FMA: B, Bill from Gravity Falls, and the list that goes on.

If a character is a terrible person, that's fine by me. But if the author tries and fails to redeem them, yet still acts as though they are suddenly this amazing person, that's when I have an issue with it.

Bakugou was originally written to be a minor antagonist, and that would have been fine, if Horikoshi didn't suddenly go "I drew him crying so imma fix him".

Redemption is such a complex yet simple thing to do. So when you try to do it and fail spectacularly, um, yeah, I do not enjoy that character or your writing.

That is my main issue with Bakugou. I do not think he deserved any redemption, not because he's a bad person, but because there is nothing to convince me that he could change.

He gets one scene where he goes, "boohoo I lost and everyone is stronger than me" then cries, and that's supposed to be enough for him to become a better person? That is nowhere near enough.

There was no moment that made me believe he genuinely regretted and took accountability for the abuse he put Izuku through in middle school.

"He changed!" That's not my issue. I don't care that he's changed. I care that I don't believe in it. If there was a plausible reason as to why he changed, then I would be fine with it. Maybe I'd even enjoy him!

The fact that he's changed doesn't mean shit if it's not believable.

"That was in middle school!" Okay. This one pisses me off the most. That was a year pre-canon? Oh, wow, I guess that's completely fine! It's not as if characters are the way they are based on their past. Oh, Itachi killed the Uchiha clan before canon! Okay, maybe comparing a massacre to bullying is a bit unfair. Still, just because it happened a year ago, it doesn't mean it never happened. It doesn't mean that he's changed considerably.

"Izuku doesn't have any lasting damage and forgave him!" And? Just because your friend forgives their bully, it doesn't mean you have to forgive them. And, again, I do not believe Bakugou's apology was good in anyway. He was trash-talking Izuku, blaming All Might for Izuku's behaviour, and didn't accept any culpability for what he did to him. He didn't tell anyone else what he did to Izuku. Also, if Izuku really didn't have any lasting damage from the bullying, then why did Bakugou's apology make him calm down? If he didn't care about the bullying, then why is he so relieved by the apology? BECAUSE HE WAS AFFECTED.

"Bakugou was being abused!" ... NO HE WASN'T!! Mitsuki is not abusive. Yes, she hit him round the back of his head. After he threatened her. Anyone with Asian parents can tell you that her hit does not hurt. Not only is it somewhat normal in Asian families, but it also doesn't hurt. We have no evidence that she is abusive. Horikoshi knows how to set up abusive families, as seen with the Todorokis. This not that. Either way, even if she was, being abused doesn't mean it's okay to abuse others. You can hurt without hurting others.

"It's the school and teacher's fault!" No, it's not. Part of the fault lies with them enabling him, but Bakugou is already fifteen when the series starts. His mother clearly doesn't agree with his attitude. The school is only partially to blame. Bakugou should have learned by himself what is right and what is not. In fact, he clearly does know considering he doesn't want any of that stuff on his records in case U.A. rejects him.

Again. I don't care if he's a terrible person. I care that he's a terrible character.

So the next time someone says that I'm stuck in Season One, take a moment and think about what you're saying. Bad people in fiction are entertaining. Bad characters are not.

#mha critical #bnha critical #anti bakugou katsuki #i hate bakugou so much you don't understand unless you do #he's a terrible character and a terrible person

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five-one-two-station · 9 months ago

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Everybody should have their own fun, and this isn't trying to harsh anybody's buzz, but I find the impulse to make your own cutesy/badass Replika oc doing funny or heroic or badass things a little odd. Like, that character you designed as a super badass soldier, or well-armed and armored steely eyed cop type... who would they have been built to fight or police exactly? Remember who all those guns and weapons were intended for use on?

I know we're all sick of discourse over who "gets" the game, and I'm by no means scolding anybody for something that harmless, but what's interesting to me is the sense that designing overtly "cool" Replika personas and OCs, complete with the propaganda poster style imagery, feels a little...

I mean, bluntly, it's like the in-world propaganda worked, unironically, on some level, for many people. Kolibris aren't scary, they're whimsical and fun! Storches aren't notably cruel enforcers and chain gang drivers, they're Protektors! Falke isn't a camp commandant, she's a beautiful angel!

The Replikas aren't cool and heroic figures in the reality of the game. They're the carefully crafted organs of a system of control so dreadful it could do what it did to Elster and Ariane. They're victims to that system themselves too, sure - and humanising them is a nuanced and valuable observation of how totalitarian regimes maintain themselves - but that doesn't negate the fact they're also the ones who operate, enforce and perpetuate it, a big part of what the game knows and communicates about such societies. It's notable that the game makes it clear few, if any, of the Replikas actually buy into the Nation as an ideal at all - they enforce it no less pitilessly anyway, incapable or unsafe to imagine anything else.

Their affectations, pasttimes, trinkets, and even affections for each other, all serve to draw a stark contrast to how callously they regard the gestalts they keep suppressed. Their disposability is something they're conscious and fearful of themselves, but fail to recognise as a commonality with the people they brutalise every day, their business as usual. The only grief, tragedy or suffering they acknowledge is their own - they have no regard for any such things in the humans they have... well, dehumanised.

But S-23 Sierpinski was such a hellhole for most of its denizens under "normal" conditions that the nightmare it becomes is arguably an improvement; if only because there are fewer people left now to suffer it. There's a dark poetry here - because the place's banal cruelty is "off camera" to us, it's very naturally less real to us than the grief of the crying Eule. It's only natural, too, to forget how grim the Replikas' purposes are when you don't have to see anyone endure the brunt of it.

And isn't that the very same effect a state like the Nation is seeking in the first place, by disappearing people away to such dark little corners to have it done? In our world, no less than that one.

That works like a kind of propaganda too, not being able to see it - a propaganda of hidden things, as powerful as any poster. A space that's been intentionally left blank.

Kolibris are literal thought police; they intrude on people's very minds, interrogating them to death as a matter of course, with hardly a care either way. The various Protektor classes are functionally concentration camp guards and slave drivers. Falke and Adler are overseeing what amounts to a gulag, one so unimaginably awful Ariane preferred to spend years of her life alone in space to the prospect of being sent there, and inevitably worked to death, far underground.

I think there's a reason we never see one of those posters for LSTRs in game. How could we be asked to forgive our own if we ever did?

#signalis #signalis spoilers

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coraniaid · 6 months ago

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buffy/faith for the ask game

(Reverse unpopular opinions)

Easily my favorite Buffy ship and one of my favorites in any work of fiction. I think the main reasons it works so well for me are:

The way it resonates so strongly with what's going on in the rest of the show the season Faith arrives. I mean, Buffy comes out to her mother (as a Slayer), which is treated by the show as ... well, as Buffy coming out ("it's because you didn't have a strong father figure, isn't it?" / "have you tried ... not being a Slayer?" / "I've tried to march in the Slayer Pride Parade...") and a handful of episodes later Buffy meets another girl who is also a Slayer and who she starts spending a lot of time with (because they have a connection -- "it's kind of a Slayer thing" -- which she doesn't have with her other, non-Slayer friends). And while they're busy patrolling cemeteries and looking for vampires every night, this other Slayer is keen to (1) talk to Buffy about sex and quiz her on her love life; (2) repeatedly tell her that "all men are beasts" and "losers" who can't be trusted; (3) suggest that Buffy should be more open to having sex with the people she spends her nights hunting vampires with (like ... who, Faith?); and (4) is delighted when Buffy breaks up with her boyfriend (and later furious when she gets back together with her previous ex) and immediately suggests that she could replace him ("You're still going to that dance, right? [...] Why don't we go together?"). If this was deliberately laying the ground work for an explicitly romantic arc, it would feel pretty heavy-handed. The fact that it apparently wasn't (at least not on the part of the showrunner or of most of the writers) almost makes it work better, in some ways.

The way that Faith is, from the very beginning, very deliberately written as a foil for Buffy, a person Buffy might have been if things went just a little differently in her life -- because she goes through things very much like things the audience has already seen Buffy go though (living alone in a small place in a strange town with no friends all season the way Buffy did in Anne, panicking and starting to pack to run away in Faith, Hope & Trick in the same way Buffy was accused of doing just the episode before, killing a person the way Buffy thought she had in Season 2's Ted, the way her fear of Kakistos mirrors Buffy's fear of the Master in When She Was Bad) and because she is so aware of the fact that she's always being compared to Buffy and coming up short, either by other people or herself ("you get the Mom, you get the Watcher ... what do I get?") it's very easy to tie Faith's arc across the show back to Buffy and to her feelings about Buffy. Faith wanting Buffy to accept her becomes Faith wanting this idealized version of herself to forgive her failings. And likewise Buffy recriprocating Faith's feelings and admitting to herself that she is attracted to Faith becomes Buffy accepting that Faith (and the things she represents) really are an integral part of Buffy herself; that Faith isn't entirely wrong when she says that Buffy enjoys being a Slayer and that being a Slayer is something she should be proud of (or, again, being "a Slayer").

Apparently this wasn't the original plan for the character (if there ever was anything like an 'original plan'), but the fact Faith's arc in Season 3 so clearly mirrors Angel's in Season 2 -- and the fact she is so very weird about Angel all season (and that Buffy is equally weird about how attracted to Faith she just keeps insisting Angel must be) just naturally suggests that Faith might have a similiar role to Angel in the narrative beyond just the circumstances of her betrayal of (and later not-quite-being-killed by) Buffy. And Angel is -- for the first three seasons of the show at least -- primarily cast in the role of Buffy's doomed tragic love interest who she has to (metaphorically) kill but will later be reunited with. Which makes Faith ... well, something.

Even if not all the writers were on board, the fact that Eliza Dushku was deliberately playing Faith as attracted to Buffy (and that SMG was playing Buffy as alternately frustrated by and protective of and tempted by Faith) gives their scenes together a chemistry that I don't think most of Buffy's (or Buffy's) canon relationships ever managed. Whether that's the Amends porch scene or Buffy kissing Faith in the hospital in Graduation Day or any and all of their various fights across the show. And those fight scenes are all great, which is another thing I love about the ship: is it really a proper enemies-to-lovers arc if one of the people in it hasn't tried to kill the other one and left them in a coma for months?

Faith's return to Buffy in the last five epsiodes of the show is one of the last season's saving graces, and it helps that by this point the writers definitely seemed to be playing up the ship deliberately ("Willow said you needed me: didn't give it a lot of thought" / "Defensiveness and weird mixed signals ... I've got Faith for that" / "Deep down you've always wanted Buffy to accept you. To love you." / "It feels like it's mine ... I guess that means it's yours"). Even without ever being canon and without wandering what happens post-Chosen, it feels like there's a real narrative arc to their relationship, from their initially rocky start through to "just good friends" to bitter enemies through to Faith seeking (and finding) some measure of redemption and Buffy cautiously letting her back into her life. Faith isn't in the show much (or even mentioned in the show in most episodes), but it feels like she has a genuinely meaningful connection to Buffy that most characters who appeaer in less than a season's worth of episodes can't manage.

The thing that made the ship work for me, rewatching the show after several years back in 2020, is the fact that Faith is -- even at her worst -- incredibly sympathetic precisely because she is such a loser and hates herself so much. She boasts about being a great actor despite the fact we see her awkwardly telling the sort of transparent lies that ... well, normally only Buffy manages (compare "There's this big party ..." in Amends to Buffy trying to tell her old crush Ford that "there was a cat ... and then there was another cat, and they were fighting"), she wants people to think she's cool so badly but only manages to fool Xander and Willow, she tries to act as though she's happy without friends but we only ever see her alone sitting watching old tv shows or lying listlessly on her bed, she insists she doesn't need a Watcher and "has a problem with authority figures" but she is so openly desperate for any sort of parental guidance in her life that she sides with first Mrs Post then the Mayor. She ties Buffy's mom up so she can have someone to listen to how sad she is that Buffy's moved on to a new guy in college and "dumped" her. The scene in the church in Who Are You? where Faith-as-Buffy furiously attacks Buffy-as-Faith while screaming through tears that she's "nothing ... disgusting ... murderous bitch" is, I think, a strong contendor for the best scene the show ever produced.

As Doug Petrie said, the reason Faith works as a character -- and the reason that Buffy/Faith works as a ship -- is that Faith is incredibly unhappy. If Faith was the cool loner she tries to pass herself off as -- and which some of the fandom seems to think she is -- the ship wouldn't be nearly as compelling to me. Faith isn't just the part of Buffy who loves Slaying and pushes back when other people give her orders, and she's not just another verison of Angelus. She's the part of Buffy from Becoming who lost everything and ran away from home, only unlike Buffy she never got to go home again. As Angel asked Buffy in that episode: "no friends, no hope ... take that away, what's left?". Well, Faith is what's left. Of course Buffy would see herself in Faith, right from the beginning. Of course Buffy would want to protect her. As Buffy (Sunnydale Class Protector 1999) tells Angel, Faith is in pain ... she's somebody who "some people ... protective-type people" are naturally drawn to. The show is very consistent about the fact that Buffy's type is friendless losers who look good in leather and can fight alongside her in battle (but not quite as well, so she can protect them and look after them when they're hurt). And what bigger loser in the show is there than Faith?

#btvs #asks #thanks!#fuffy

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spop-romanticizes-abuse · 9 months ago

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their crimes and problems with their redemption arcs under the cut!

catra:

crimes:

War crimes

Abuse of power

Corruption

Reckless endangerment

Psychological abuse

Assault

Terrorism

Attempted regicide

Attempted mass murder

Attempted world domination

Attempted cataclysm

Conspiracy

Mass destruction

Abduction & kidnapping

Unlawful imprisonment

Brainwashing

Theft

Torture

Treason

Usurpation

Coercion

Stalking

Mutilation

Aiding and abetting

Illegal use of weapons

Espionage

Crimes against peace

Crimes against Etheria

Altering reality

how was her redemption arc carried out?

she was only redeemed in the final season and her arc wasn't as drawn out as it should have been.

she never faces any consequences of her actions and is forgiven by her victims almost immediately, either after a vague apology or no apology at all.

she continues torturing and abusing people around her, especially her love interest, adora. her redemption arc doesn't mean anything since she never actually changes.

the diamonds:

crimes:

Multiple planetary conquests

Mass invasion

Mass terraformation

Attempted omnicide

Crimes against the universe

Cruel and unusual punishments

Unlawful executions

Slavery

Oppression

Propaganda

Abuse of power

Mass murder

Terrorism

Ecocide

Genocide

War crimes

Hate crimes

Corruption

Psychological abuse

Brainwashing

Unethical experimentation

Mass forced confinement

Mass destruction

Mass forced transmutations

how was their redemption arc carried out?

same as catra, their redemption was done during the final few episodes of steven universe, and it was way too sudden to be realistic.

they never face any consequences of their actions and still gets to retain their positions as cosmic rulers.

they do, however, seem to put in some effort to change, although it's not clear if this is helpful. steven also does not seem to forgive them.

lilith clawthorne:

crimes:

Malediction

Attempted murder

Child endangerment

Hostage-taking

Kidnapping

Coercion

Malefic

Treason

Cheating

Torture

Abuse

Assault

Aiding and abetting

how was her redemption arc carried out?

she only had to make one sacrifice and that was the extent of her redemption arc.

she is also forgiven too quickly by the people she had hurt.

she does change for the better, and proves to be an ally to the heroes (albeit being an underutilized character).

sasha waybright:

crimes:

Abuse of power

Psychological abuse

Attempted murder

Treason

Terrorism

Harassment

Vandalism

Theft

Usurpation

Animal cruelty

Conspiracy

Kidnapping

Incrimination

Sabotage

Child endangerment

how was her redemption arc carried out?

we only see the beginning of her redemption, the rest of it happens almost entirely off-screen. this was a lazy choice, as we never see an actual “arc”, only the beginning and the end of it.

she is almost immediately forgiven by her friends. there is some lingering suspicion in some episodes, but not enough for everything she had done prior to that season.

however, she also seems to have turned into a better person and doesn't repeat any of her past toxic behaviour.

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oscconfessions · 3 months ago

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my distaste for the new ii ep comes from how annoying it made everyone be about taco, the ep was good but yeah i just realized that. anyway.

listen. I think that Taco CAN become a better person. I think that she CAN be able to move on and that she needs to let go of II as a whole. But that doesn't mean that all of her actions are immediately erased/forgiven either. Like the whole point of the episode is to show that Taco KNOWS that she's a terrible person, but like, being aware of it doesn't erase all the harm she did. And Taco KNOWS that herself. She says that she can't let go, and she DOESN'T want to get better either. That's the whole thing. She doesn't want to get better because she thinks she can't get better. And like. Listen

BOTH take aways from the episode are like genuinely horrid. "Taco should make up with Mic and Pickle" nope! She wouldn't! And she can't! She literally can't! She died from the stress the idea of confronting them caused her, and she doesn't want to because she's aware of how much pain she caused. Mic leaving made her realize she was terrible. "Taco is an irredimable monster" ALSO no. Listen. Taco isn't doing anything to become better. Blah blah blah "her arc is not done yet" we know shut up. My point is that Taco is aware that she's a terrible person and her whole song is about her having pity for herself instead of working on being better. MEPAD is the one who's pushing her to do those things, but that's because he's only aware of like, half of the context and doesn't know Mic's and Pickle's sides. Does this mean she's irredemable? Not really. Yeah she did a lot of harm on purpose and recognizing that WON'T kill any of you. And calling out the fucked up shit she did won't kill you either nor does make you a woman hater, everyone calls out shitty stuff characters do all the time, I am impressed that the "evil woman enjoyers" are so adamandant on saying that the evil woman isn't actually fucked up??? However. I don't think Taco is irredemable AND this comes from someone who very openly dislikes her. I GENUINELY want Taco to become a better person and to heal, I want her to let go of II, and of everyone there as a result. People don't seem to understand how her attachment to the past, and to the show, AND to pickle, is literally killing her at the moment. It is literally stopping her from becoming a better person.

Feeling "bad" about your actions doesn't make it okay. You can't keep doing shitty things and then feel bad about yourself like that makes it okay. That's the thing that Taco does. There's like SPECIAL emphasis on mic and pickle being happy and comfortable without taco being around, everyone calls out Taco because she's been stalking them, Taco did the whole questions thing just for. the sake of it. Like she didn't have to do that. Sure "I want you guys to see how bad the show got". Knife LITERALLY called her Ms Projector. But Taco CAN change. She NEEDS to forgive herself and let go for once and for all.

AND before someone compares Taco to Nickel or to any character to ignore the whole fucking point of the ep and of this analysis. They're not the same. They have their similarities but Taco did all of that shit because she wanted the money, and just because she could. Like have we forgotten that she wanted Mic to literally kill Balloon. Come on. A taser would've just killed him. Taco is NOT trying to get better, she says it on her song as well. She knows she did terrible damage and doesn't want to get better because she genuinely THINKS she can't start over at other places. Her unhealthy attachment to II is ruining her. And Nickel? He was like that because Balloon WAS a terrible person on s1, Nickel wanted to protect his alliance, and he KNOWS he was a terrible person now but you know what he did? He started to become a better person AND a better friend once he realized he was in the wrong. AND he's not aware like Taco is! He IS going to therapy and becoming a better person because he WANTS to be a good friend. Taco isn't. Taco kept digging further and further on her own hole despite the fact that she could've just. Start to get better ever since the ep started or moved on with Mepad but she didn't!!!! Because that wouldn't be Taco!!!!

and because i know people will only focus on me shitting on taco via recognizing what the ep pretty much told us. AGAIN. TACO CAN BECOME A BETTER PERSON. BUT SHE NEEDS TO LET GO OF II. AND IT DOESN'T ERASE HER ACTIONS TO DO THAT BUT IT MEANS THAT SHE GENUINELY WANTS TO BECOME BETTER. THE WHOLE POINT OF II IS THAT YOUR ACTIONS HAVE CONSEQUENCES BUT THAT YOU DON'T HAVE TO LET THAT STOP YOU FROM TRYING AGAIN. TACO IS STOPPING HERSELF.

also i honestly don't think people actually like taco as a character i think most of you are like that with her because you think she's hot. "oh max you just hate women" first of all shut up get another argument for whenever someone calls out your shit and also don't you DARE forget the fact that people villainized candle for wanting to take care of herself + that people were HORRID about cabby winning and about her disability. like the treatment you guys give to women is genuinely horrid. DON'T get me started on the way people treat mic or how people infantilize suitcase for being naive/kind. i love fem characters (my main one is literally mic) and the way literally everyone started to treat taco as a shell of her character is genuinely upsetting when the whole point of the ep was to show that "taco is a bad person and she doesn't want to get better". do you guys ACTUALLY care about taco? do you guys see her as a complex individual? do you understand that she's a bad person? do you understand that she doesn't want to get better? do you understand that she NEEDS to let go of ii AND of the past in order to start healing properly? do you understand that you can still enjoy an evil character while also not having to justify their actions, ESPECIALLY when said character recognized that they're fucked up? or do you just feel attracted to her aesthetic? because i think most of you are just attracted to her aesthetic and the fact that she's "hot" to you. taco is a genuinely compelling character and deserves so much better than being treated as a hot woman who's main character trait gets forgotten every single time.

also the ep made me like her more actually but by jove is everyone stupid about her leave her aloneeeee she doesn't need to be excused she doesn't need to be condemned she needs to let go. she needs to accept that meanwhile she can't fix things anymore that doesn't mean she can't work to be a better person.

#confession #/ii #/ii/knife #/ii/taco #/ii/pickle #/ii/microphone #/ii/mepad #/ii/nickel

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villainsandvictimsalliance · 9 months ago

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It looks like the rewind Theory might be coming true

There are many variations of that theory, but yes.

Honestly, it is badly needed in the story if what Horikoshi is aiming for is an ending where the kids and the villains survive.

Introducing a character that can undone damage is always insurance for the author. You have to be careful to not overuse it to the point it loses its impact. If no one ever dies and everyone keeps on resurrecting, the predictability becomes boring.

The good thing is that bnha doesn't overuse Eri. They don't use it to rewind the damage done to the characters when they lose an extremity, for example. It didn't work on Nighteye. They didn't try to use it on All Might—and if they did, I can't remember when it happened.

The point is that I liked that Horikoshi left Eri's quirk to the end of the manga. That way he could make the characters give their 100% without it meaning sure death. It scares the readers, like it should, it creates tension. Knowing that Eri's quirk might not work is another good decision. Even if she shows up after the big showdown, the public doesn't know who is going to survive.

Now, when I say there are many variations...

I'm against the version of it where the villains are turned into kids. Where is the fun of it, uh?

It erases the complexity of each character and all they fought for. What was the point of fighting so much if you're gonna erase what happened? If there's no consequences, no accountability? Any story should grow from the risks of the actions taken. We want to know there's something to be lost, that's where the adrenaline comes from. That's the entertaining part!

The version that completely heals their wounds is also kinda... bland. I'm a fan of bnha because the story doesn't solve most disabilities with magic.

If a pro-hero loses a leg or an eye, they'd have to learn to fight with the cards they were dealt with. Like I said before, those wounds tell a story of the risks they took. Aizawa cut his leg to survive and see another day with Eri and his students. Mirko lost most of her limbs giving her absolute all!!!!

It's the same for villains. It moves you, the way those villains would sacrifice themselves for their goals. Compress' lost arm tells the story of how they lost Magne. Giran lost his fingers when he refused to sell the League, so their absence is the evidence of his loyalty.

I want irreversibility. I want permanece. I want to see the growth that comes with accepting what we do in our lives and how we have to keep going.

My favorite version is the one that heals enough for the person to survive, but not much more. It is not going to take you to step one, it can't erase all you did and all that was done to you.

A second chance, but you have to make it from where you were left. No shortcuts, no easy way out. Either you commit to it or you're over.

I don't want to see Touya without his burns. That is boring! I don't want squeaky clean Touya, all perfect and smooth skinned and whatever. That is not him. He's the boy who burned in the flames of his passion, right or wrong. He's the boy who is supposed to be dead, but survived because he was a stubborn bastard.

The story can lessen them, of course. At this point Touya is more scrap put together by metal than anything else. He cannot possibly survive like that, so he needs to be healed enough to live. The burns can even lessen with time, fading as Touya heals, but I want the memory to last. I don't care if he forgives Enji, I want him to be forced to look at the burns every day knowing how they're there.

Another example?

Tomura's scars tell a story. You cannot resurrect his family, so don't go erasing the scar in his eye or in his lip. Don't go erasing the evidence of his struggle.

To be fair, Tomura has changed a lot since his first appearance. I remember him with yellow teeth, all skinny to the bone. It shows that no one cared for him. Well, maybe enough to keep him breathing, but there was no delicacy involved. It's funny to think how he got better and better the more time he spent far from AFO. That and the surgery he had to undergo...

Which is a wonderful terrible concept. It's about the cleansing, how AFO was preparing Tomura's body to be his. Body modifications to assert ownership, that's a horror favorite. The idea of being "cured" to the point you can't recognize your own body. You know what I mean.

I'm glad that when rewind was used on Mirio, it cost him something. He lost his quirk for a while and he had to make an effort to go back to who he was. I'd say that the nature of the story helped him bounce and that's a chance we didn't see his struggle a bit more.

Anyway, that's my opinion on the matter. I hope it'll be a variation I like and not something that's gonna leave me sweating cold every time I dare to remember it.

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spxdyr · 1 month ago

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i can't sleep and i keep seeing people angry at gerrards "redemption" so i just wanna talk about redemptions again for funsies.

i genuinely don't think what gerrard did should be considered a redemption because it wasn't. gerrard didn't save the day, bobby and the rest of the 118 saved the day, gerrard was simply a pawn. he was the person who could realistically get close enough to ortiz to get her to let her guard down without raising any alarm bells.

gerrard only agreed because he would get something out of it. and i truly believe it isn't the what that makes a redemption but the why.

i'm gonna use prince zukos redemption arc from atla as my example/comparison genuinely i genuinely believe its one of the strongest redemption arcs in all of television history. i'm also going to use negans from the walking dead because its a very divisive redemption arc that i also believe is one the greatest in tv history because of what it isn't.

first, i want to emphasize that i wholly believe that redemption isn't up to the narrative its up to the audience. the narrative can try to convince you of anything but if the audience doesn't buy it, it doesn't mean shit.

but onto the actual point. gerrard did a good thing, he is not a good person. bad people do good things all the time because two things can be true at once.

the reason zuko has such a strong redemption arc isn't because he did a couple good things. its because we as the audience saw him go through genuine introspection and come to the realization that he wasn't a bad person doing bad things. he was a good person influenced by the people around him to do bad things.

but it also so good because we saw the episodes watching him not only ask for the Gaangs forgiveness but also the audiences. we as the audience were forced to sit down with zuko and decide whether or not we would be able to redeem his actions. and character by character we as the audience found ourselves forgiving him.

it also helped that zuko had a character in the show who was the mirror of his redemption. iroh was also a good person who did bad things but we are immediately forgiving of those bad things because we are constantly showed his goodness through zuko.

gerrard didn't have any of that. in fact the only characters that are still presented in the narrative that might mirror gerrard come in the form of tommy. who also didn't get actual redemption. he was granted forgiveness by passage of time. which as an audience member doesn't change how i view him.

zuko got redemption from both the narrative, the characters, and the audience because he earned it. gerrard didn't get redemption from either, he just did a good thing for personal gain.

on to negans redemption. i want to preface this by saying im a negan defender until the day i die so if you hate negan, disregard this i guess.

negan was offered a redemption by the narrative, the characters, and the audience, and technically he didn't take it.

the thing with the walking dead is that technically there's no heros or villains. there's just people trying to survive, the hero is whoever's story you're following the most and in this case it's rick and friends. there are however, people who are objectively worse than others (ie the guy who tried to sa a 12 year old carl).

negan wasn't a villain he was an antagonist. he was the very thing in the way of rick and friends' main goal, survival.

and he was a good at it. he was so good at it he killed two main characters in one episode, then about 2-3 more over the course of his run as the primary antagonist. then he lost. and spent years in jail for it.

and at no point during that jail time was he offered, nor did he ask for, redemption. because at the end of the day he did what he thought he had to, to survive. and to his people he was a hero.

negans redemption doesn't actually start until years after his arrest. and it happens through judith. a character who wasn't there for negans big performance but was directly effected by it. judith saw negan for what he was, a man trying to survive. and a man who was at the very least good enough that her brother wanted him not be be killed as his dying wish.

negan didn't ask for judiths redemption, she's just a child. but judith, in her childlike optimism, could see the "good" in him.

and objectively, negan was "good." he had his rules that made him better than a lot of other antagonists in the show. rules like no hurting kids, no sa, etc.

when the narrative did finally ask the audience and the characters to see things from negans perspective it wasn't forcing us (or the characters) to forgive him. but inevitably, many characters saw negan for who he was a person who did bad things to survive. and the audience could choose what they wanted to do with that.

in fact, there's a character who, much like much of the audience, refused to forgive negan. maggie was the most affected by negans little performance as it killed her husband in front of her while she was pregnant. and negan never asks her forgiveness, he never expects it. negan doesn't want to be redeemed by anyone let alone maggie. he is only good to maggie as a debt to be repaid. one that he also agrees will likely cost his life.

negan is the perfect example of how redemption isn't just a part of the narrative. a character's redemption doesn't come from the story, or even just the characters in the story. redemption comes from the audience AND the characters agreeing to redeem that character. and the audience and characters don't have to agree on the redemption.

but the thing about gerrard is that he wasn't redeemed by anything. he wasn't redeemed by the narrative because the story was telling us that bobby came up with a plan and gerrard agreed because it suited his interest. he wasn't redeemed by the the characters because it was still pretty clear (at least to me) that the 118 still don't like or forgive gerrard just because he did one good thing, for his own interests. and he wasn't redeemed by the audience because as far as the audience ive interacted with have told me, they still hate that man.

the narrative can't force the audience to redeem someone. that's why the audience is there. the audience is as much a character in the show as the actual characters. especially in the age of social media. so if you hate gerrard still, good you're supposed to.

nothing about gerrard changed so why would we consider one good action a redemption arc? was buck suddenly a villain for filling the lawsuit? no. was eddie suddenly a villain for hurting chris? no. was hen suddenly a villain for cheating on karen? no. was chim suddenly a villain for punching buck? no. then gerrard wasn't suddenly a hero for turning on his body cam and egging on ortiz.

storytelling isn't the place for black and white thinking. there's so much nuance in it. if the show was constantly telling you exactly what to think it would be bad tv. gerrard wasn't redeemed in the same way the buckley parents weren't redeemed, in the same way the diaz parents weren't redeemed, in the same way tommy wasn't redeemed.

thank you for coming to my ted talk.

#911 abc #911 fandom #911 season 8 #bobby nash #athena grant #evan buck buckely #eddie diaz #hen wilson #karen wilson #chimney han #maddie buckley #this is a ling one ladies and gentlemen

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mongeese · 23 days ago

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I'm not involving myself in the arguments again, but ep 1 Carol snaps that she "always knew Darryl would do something like this one day" and had a larger reaction to the car crashing than (her phrasing) "losing the kid".

So that's why the initial impression of Carol is that she is mean, and Matt's later dad facts + Darryl referencing Carol calling him fat and Darryl hiding his hobbies from her give a certain impression to people.

I do not care about discourse that happened probably years ago because it simply doesn't matter but I AM a defender of fictional women so I'm gonna reply to this. Know that any bitchiness in this post is not directed toward you specifically anon but rather it is directed toward general misogynistic fandom culture (which is rampant).

First point, Carol snapping at Darryl: obviously that's an imperfect reaction, but she's also just had the bombshell dropped on her that her husband crashed their car and lost their son. I think I can forgive her some anger in this moment. There's also probably built up resentment toward Darryl being expressed in this conversation, because she's falling out of love with him and he is the exact opposite of emotionally intelligent and I'm sure communication has been deteriorating between them for a while. Not ideal, but I can't particularly fault her for it. Also, literally in the same conversation, Darryl asks Carol to ask Darnell about the plays he emailed him, while his son is missing, which suggests that he is not always the most responsible! Perhaps giving some credence to her statement!

Reading the transcript, she didn't have a larger reaction to denting the hood of the car. Darryl said it last and she processed it first, but immediately after she began berating him much more intensely about losing their son. Which, again, is cruel but also understandable, given that in her mind there's no explanation for how he could've lost track of Grant other than gross negligence.

Gonna be honest and say I remember nothing about the context of Carol calling Darryl fat. I'd assume it was either a bit of a mean joke that Darryl took very personally bc his self esteem is in the gutter, or her saying he should lose weight. Neither is good, and I won't defend them, but also, compared to all the other shit characters do in the podcast? So tame.

Darryl hides everything from everyone. That's like, the core of his character. It's entirely possible that any hobbies he hides from Carol is simply because he's ashamed of them for catholic guilt/toxic masculinity/general weird repression paranoia reasons, and not because of anything she said or did.

Ultimately this is a pointless exercise because even if all those things WERE as bad as people make them out to be, I'd still be a Carol defender, because all 4 of the dads canonically do things which are way worse. Glen in particular is undeniably a shitty person (at least until 2/3 through the podcast, where I'm at right now), and Ron isn't much better. Yet they're both fan favorites. Why are they given the grace to make mistakes and be mean and thoughtless and flawed and still be liked, but Carol is hated? Could it, mayhaps, have something to do with the fact that they are men? And thus their shitty behavior is fine, because they're oh-so deep, but clearly CAROL doesn't have that depth, because she's just a woman, and she should be more understanding, and motherly, and caring, etc etc.

Like. I'm just fucking begging people in fandom spaces to have an ounce of self awareness and think about why, maybe, you're so ready to hate the female characters who don't act nice all the time, but you love the flawed tragic backstory men? What dominant power structure and social conditioning could be at work here? You are not immune to internalized misogyny (yes, even if you're a woman)

#dndads #this post is about carol but know that my anger is fueled by every complicated woman who has ever been done dirty by a fandom #its like that fucking baby killer john post. which isnt even a fucking exaggeration ive seen fandoms where that is 100% the vibe

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dootznbootz · 5 months ago

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I know we love our morally gray characters. But the internet kinda ruined Circe for me.

Let me explain.

I remember I actually used to really like Circe's character when I first read the Odyssey last year. I loved her as a "helpful antagonist type" character.

But what ruined her character for me was everybody calling her a "girlboss" or just simping for her in a way? But they completely disregard the fact she technically raped a man. (But no one cares about that because male SA victims never get taken seriously, especially in media smh)

Now, I can never experience Circe as the same character because all I see is a terrible person being glorified because of her gender. And then people say double standards don't exist!

Which I hate cause she's a genuinely cool character. (From a writing standpoint)

Circe isn't a bad character let me be clear (in the Odyssey anyway. Cough cough Madeline Mil-) But I just hate how people romanticize her completely ignoring her terrible actions. And to think it's all just because she's a "hot badass female".

And this isn't just about Odysseus either, there's literally a myth where she tries to seduce a man, but when he remains faithful she turns him into a woodpecker-

People can like her CHARACTER, however, they should still acknowledge her bad actions too and hold her accountable. If we can all agree it's shitty what Zeus did to a bunch of women, we can also agree what Circe did to Odysseus was shitty.

Women sexually assaulting men is just as inhumane as vice versa and we have to stop turning a blind eye about it, even if it's fictional.

And I feel like people WOULD actually hold her accountable if she was a male character. Which makes me even more angry.

Maybe this is just a me thing, but I just can't fawn over a character and call them hot when they've done something as bad as some of the things Circe has done.

So, I guess what you could get out of this-

Please stop romanticizing circe.

Hold her accountable as you would any other character.

Don't be so forgiving just because you find her attractive.

Anyways, thank you for coming to my Ted talk and sorry for ranting

honestly yeah, all of this.

I sadly had to block Circe's tag on tumblr because it pisses me off how much people glorify her and/shittalk Odysseus with it. (I trust my friends when they have Circe content lol)

I love Circe as well. She's such an interesting and fun character but how people twist her just fucks with me so much. Also to make HER a victim just for girlbossness? What's so girlboss about having such a horrific thing happen to you?

I said it in a different post but you can thirst for Circe without making fun of her victim. People will call a victim of rape a manwhore or a slut as if what happened to him was a grand ol time. It's genuinely disturbing. He is shown to have PTSD from it (in my opinion) in the Odyssey. This book is ancient and yet it captures that better than anything I've read.

Odysseus isn't necessarily a wholesome, "goody-to-shoes" man. He does a lot of awful things. That doesn't mean that the suffering he went through is suddenly negated.

Even bringing up stuff with female characters, the fact that people will water them down so then they're not "problematic" pisses me off. Women can be horrible, even good women. Penelope is my fave but she's pretty awful in many ways.

Evidence will be right in front of people and they won't care. Crying, begging to go, fear, avoidance, numbness, etc. There'll be excuses anyway. "He's a guy, he's fine with it." "Men are sex crazed, especially back then." "He didn't try hard enough." "He should be grateful."

Honestly? What saddens me the most is that I don't think people will ever really understand what happened or even WANT to because they have their own idea in their head and refuse to see it for what it is. I mean Hades game did it too. It's really sad.

Circe and him weren't fwb. They weren't lovers. What about "heart full of grim forebodings" screams love? He wanted to save his friends and go home.

#lol my cat could tell that I was upset and came to snuggle.#ask #anon #anti circe #anti madeline miller #I'm...a bit tired of angsty shit right now lol. I want my fucked up lil idiot to be happy. He's been through enough.#Mad rambles #shot by odysseus #save me morally gray circe #tw rape mention #tw sa mention

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familyagrestefanblog · 1 year ago

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Clarification I definitely should have done ever since season 4 and the Ladynoir conflict started escalating, but hey, let's just get it out:

There are reasons why I'm harping down so badly on Miraculous' Girlboss feminism and defend Adrien as much as I do.

To get the feminist (in-universe) explaination out of the way first:

I would be lying if I said that I like the direction the show has taken Marinette's character and the story in general. But regarding her specifically I simply have to say that most of my problems with her are how she is written as Ladybug, Guardian, and especially leader & partner. Not in her civilian self. Hence why you won't find that alot on my blog, only when it contributes to the overarching double standards problem from s4 I take issue with.

I simply cant deny it, Ladybug is a kind of leader I just came to not be able to respect alot anymore in how she operates most things bc she doesn't really ever look passed how things look & stand for herself, and what SHE needs & wants. Marinette is a very low empathy person in the sense that she struggles putting herself in other people's positions, or remembers considering that at all.

But that's not the reason why I can't respect her as leader. I have ADD, that would be really hypocritical of me.

What leaves me unable to respect her as leader though (& honestly kinda even wanting Alya to take her position) is the fact that the show doesn't see much wrong with Maribug doing that.

They don't properly depict this as flawed leadership she actually NEEDS to grow out of by making up for her shortcomings by, for example, making other people her official co-leaders. Instead the show since s4 (& kinda s3) will proceed to put it's feminist foot down if Maribug isn't actually in the end 100% correct and "totally girlboss justified" in any given case - with CN & authorities specifically - no matter the context. Ergo she's barely ever truly improving her weakpoints in partnership skills for example & continues doing the same mistakes over n over.

like she genuinely would benefit from having Chat Noir as her co-leader too, not just Rena Rouge. But no. The neurodivergend low-empathy girl can't have a high-empathy boy co-leader bc apparently thats misogynistic now, huh ?

Again, I have ADD and I'm also a woman. In fact, I actually have alot in common with Maribug (hence why it hurt so much once s4 took her away from me), so forgive me when I still say: I am NOT going to lower my standards of my believe that neither of those aspects get to be an excuse on everyone else's expense regarding LEADERSHIP (which I do also am in the position of in my life).

And I repeat: LEADERSHIP. Not Marinette herself as a person necessarily & esp not her civilian life.

People always say that her critics wouldn't be so hard on her if she were a man, but I strongly disagree. In my experience, if Marinette were a boy people would actually draw a line nowadays and call out that Mariano is too stuck in his own head to be a good leader (& partner). And maybe even demand that he shouldn't be in that position anymore either at all or until he's in a better head space.

Bc with male characters people are actually drawing lines now in important factors when it comes to power & the accountability coming with it, bc in the end being in change means it ain't about you

Hence why e. g. Steve Rogers (Captain America) was then a fucking fugitive from the law when shit got real in the MCU. They had to do that bc of his leadership morality not being able to exist well within a corrupted & complex law system under fire and attack. My man's an amazing battle leader, but the MCU did VERY well leaving taking care of all kinds of social & political matters to Tony Stark. This kind of nuance ain't Steve's strength. Marinette & Steve are actually a EXTREMELY similar type of leader and it's interesting that I don't exactly vibe with him too much either in that regard, but like him as person the way I did Marinette. So for me it's definitely an issue with their type of leadership.

But the mainstream female leader characters are often still "too female" to get held to the same regular standards bc telling a female leader character in a complicated and not entirely beneficial situation & position 'yeah, it's sucks but you're not the center of the universe'' is now more often than not still "too mean/ sexist"

again, Steve was made an outlaw for a reason and you can bet if he had been a Stephanie people would have made all her struggles about sexism & called the 'outlaw leader' route after Civil War misogyny, merely bc "society doesnt respect women". This is whats happening with Maribug & it clashes with her leadership style.

Hence why there AREN'T ALOT of mainstream female leader characters. And if we get some, most of them are narratively defined by how powerful & in control they are for THEIR OWN BENEFIT and it being depicted as 100% right & just in general (like with Marinette) which goes against what a normal leader should be, so alot of people don't like them (ignoring the actual sexist people for a sec)

The first Wonder Woman movie for example was so well-received for a reason. They did it RIGHT (& may I please also recommend Wakanda Forever? Fuck, that movie was GOOD)

But yes, it's notably how Maribug treats Chat, who is supposed to be her partner and friend, that I take alot of issues with.

And yes, I would say the same if LB were male and CN female. Ladynoir is so rooted in toxic femininity that this "partnership" (or just the entire LS) the way it is could NOT exist today in gender bend. S4 and the s5 finale in particular are unthinkable in gender bend and they sold it as "justified female empowerment" & "unparalleled loving treatment" from Ladybug's side Chat Noir needed to learn to be GRATEFUL for.

All while, and I will never stop stressing this: the show has never stopped writing Marinette to treat Chat Noir as if he basically just spawns into existence once he puts on the mask. He's HALF a human being. Even once she falls in love with him in s5.

This is the fundamental and deep seeded problem of where my issues come from here. It never stands in question if Adrien views Marinette and Ladybug as full human beings, but the other way around that very much is the case. In whatever way it's depicted. Yes this is a line I draw, especially because of the whole Sentihuman thing.

I personally am alot more like Adrien regarding Friendship and partnership (or what his character initially started out). They are heavy & meaningful topics for me. So seeing Marinette being utilized to girlboss all that into the ground with Chat Noir, esp in s4, while she apparently barely ever even noticed anything wrong with how she treats him in the first place as she literally replaced him with Alya/ Rena in everything but name

cause buring him under a wall of secrets & lies meant she can still 100% benefit from his eternal devotion by letting him believe she's too alone to be a partner anymore AT ALL. (Kuro Neko onwards and then NEVER stopped letting him think she's just as alone as he is. NEVER. She's still doing it in s5 while leaving him 100% isolated which was then his demise in the s5 finale.)

and gives Alya the deluxe partnership entirely on his expense, while barely ever sparing him even the most basic thought in anything; & by "Risk" then literally having them switch status. Rena is her actual partner she fully treats that way and he's merely her favorite temp hero with no rights, which Rena was previously.

And the only reason why Chat was treated with something resembling to fairness or dignity again in season 5 (& finally wasn't a rag doll for her every little mood anymore...) was because Maribug plainly had no other choice and had her team & position of power taken away by force while Alya renounced for her own safety. And yet she's still treating him as half a human being even by the end of S5. AFTER her character development. He's Chat Noir and that's where his existence ends in her leadership & friendship. CN and Alya in s5 are literally 2 halves of ONE PARTNER.

All that was painful to watch to say the least. Bc it's imo honestly a disgrace to friendship and partnership. I can't put into words how ashamed I would be of myself if I treated someone the way Marinette treats Chat Noir (again, HALF A HUMAN BEING).

Much less a friend I claim to love dearly and don't want to loose (another thing the MCU did better regarding Steve's fall-out with Tony over Bucky... I should really make that comparison post why Steve works for me & Marinette doesnt)

Just the mere fact that Marinette in "Elation" even told Chat "It doesn't matter who's underneath your mask" is honestly outrageous.

Because thats simply what it is for me. If s4 & 5 Marinette were portrayed from a similar morality angle to Emonette in the Paris special I would have much less issues with her. Cause thats ironically an angle female characters barely get & is mostly used to redeem the broken bad boys with a hidden heart of gold™.

Double irony: s1-s3 actually DID put civilian Marinette often into that angle, hence why I really liked her, but then s4 suddenly said "well, her methods & actions really dont matter. She's wrong, but actually not really; ergo she should get rewarded in the end. Always. But with a few exceptions. Here n there she loses to claim otherwise. But actually the world just needs to learn how right & amazing she is."

She makes countless mistakes but often either doesn't really learn from them anymore or they just don't "count" bc that's 'what makes her quirky & loveable', so having any issues with her now means you hate women. And she's a very flawed leader but actually never did anything wrong. Ever. You can't have your cake and eat it too.

I will be VERY blunt now: The moment you put a female character into the leader role the FEMALE aspect is supposed to be of secondary importance. And a leader, by the nature of the position, ALWAYS has to be questioned morally wise in my opinion bc of the fatal blindspots that will automatically occur in every leadership.

And it happened here too: Chat Noir's treatment. But they demanded that her being the (female) leader means she's OWED to treat him badly & gets to keep him as blindspot on HIS expense bc she doesn't like thinking about him existing as civilian person.

A leader is ALWAYS somebody who is NOT going to sit well with everybody regarding their approach. That's a normal instinct, and in fact it would be highly dangerous if that wouldnt happen at all. So if I, or other people, don't respect her as one that simply means she has an opposition the way every leader has & is being held to normal standards a leader should be held to, regardless of gender.

Sorry if you think thats sexist, but in my opinion that's a YOU problem. I personally respect female leaders too much to not acknowledge them as anything else but the potential threats they are. The same way I do with male leaders.

You're leader first, woman second. If you can't handle that get out of the leadership position (yes, oc that also applies the other way around). Feminism was about making sure that women cant be excluded from e. g. position of power just bc we're female. The goal wasn't to have yet another group of people stomp their foots, now claiming that they are OWED power once they wanna have it to feel powerful. But that's what Marinette was used to teach an entire generation of children, especially girls.

The last thing you will EVER get me to do is accept that I should be holding women - specifically for equality, female empowerment and leadership - to LOWER (moral) standards as I would the men in her position.

Buddy, I am NOT gonna fucking do that. Just the thought is pissing me tf off, and has ever since s4, cause it directly plays into the misogynistic thinking of:

"Women can't be given power, status or even too much focus as human beings because they're too irrational and immature to be able to then lay proper priorities & take rightful accountability for their shit like a man in power could; and not just scream and cry while playing the oppressed victim card the moment things don't work out & they aren't being given the special female treatment to let them mostly off the hook consequences wise.

Leading to everyone around them, especially the MEN, having to step up, do the work & basically babysit the women like children - while still having to give her the credit as person in charge - turning the women more or less into toddlers wearing a queen's crown"

Which, by all means, Adrichat in every dynamic of the love square by season 5, Gabriel at the end of "Recreation" and even Luka & Félix (& "thankfully" Alya too since s4) had to do for Maribug in alot of ways.

Pick up all of her slack in several major areas & catering to her while simultaneously having to still give most of the credit to HER or else they would be "mean to the female lead" (it's also telling that Alya is treated the best here, & goodness dont get me started on Su-Han...).

And with that out of the way, a few more meta reasons:

1) I'm NOT watching a damn documentary. Marinette is NOT a 14 year old, she doesnt exist & isnt based on a real person or story. She's a fictional main character and narrative tool, so forgive me for approaching this differently than a real life case.

and 2) in everything I watch I automatically look out for the narrative's blind spots and victims of the writings' favorites. I take it this seriously because this is career related for me.

Hence why I have barely ever liked a main character and ironically Marinette/ Ladybug was once one of the few exceptions (alongside Korra from Legend of Korra and Blitz from Helluva Boss)

Look, when I for example watch Helluva Boss or a Yugioh show I will automatically pay extra attention to how the female characters are being treated bc they are obviously treated worse by the writing and much more neglected and scapegoated than the male characters.

Meanwhile when I watch Miraculous and She-Ra, I do the opposite and pay attention to how the male characters are treated bc now they have the gender-biase against them.

And when I for example watch Avatar the last Airbender or Legend of Korra [and She-Ra, that show is great], then I actually get to be mostly fucking happy for once in my life jfc

I'm not going to elaborate too much more on this because I already named by my main point in the beginning: Chat Noir's - not even Adrien's, I mean CHAT NOIR - sometimes honestly awful treatment being the biggest moral and narrative blind spot of the entire show, and honestly where most of Maribug's problems then are also rooted in. Hence why I started focusing so much on Chat Noir since season 4. I look at the overall narrative and circumstances and look for the blind spots that needs to be solved to get to the core of the problem of this whole mess, to get effective results.

And that was and even by the end remained the fact that Adrichat is treated so badly, scapegoated in every possible way in the name of "feminism" and kicked out of the story where HE is at the core of most everything going on, just so the show can force Maribug into everything, make things about her that have no business being about her

Just so she can then be made to constandly turn around and scream, cry and stress about problems - and go about them in the least effective way - that wouldnt be there in the first place if she wasnt the main character of a story that isnt hers.

Mate, I dont know what to tell you here, but the fact that we are following Marinette Dupain-Cheng ,who has nothing to do with anything besides being the cool action girl, is and will always remain of the of core problems of this show. I WISHED that wasnt the case. But for the love of everything, Kagami would have made so much more sense as the female lead, but no.

Anyway, I will leave it at that now cause I already elaborate much further than I initially wanted to, I just wanted to finally have all this stated.

This Blog is not a full representation of how I lay priorities in (feminist) media in general, my view adjusts to the piece of media I'm watching.

And unfortunately, ever since season 4 Miraculous turned into a full blown extreme case and has only gotten better somewhat recently. So I will continue doing what I always do: focus on the fucking VICTIM whose bad treatment pulls down the whole show's quality, and here that's plain obviously Adrien Agreste/ Chat Noir.

And with all due respect: Die mad about it.

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